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Presented    by  Vv-e/«5\C\(2/rAV^^CA-WoY^ 

BR  50  .A32  1898 

Abbott,  Lyman,  1835-1922. 

The  new  Puritanism 


THE  NEW 

PURITANISM 


PAPERS   BY 


LYMAN  ABBOTT,  AMORY  H.  BRADFORD 
CHARLES  A.  BERRY,  GEORGE  H.  GORDON 
WASHINGTON  GLADDEN,  WM.  J-.  TUCKER 


DURING    THE    SEMI-CENTENNIAL    CELEBRATION 
OF    PLYMOUTH     CHURCH,     BROOKLYN,    N.     Y. 

I  847-1 897 


WITH    INTRODUCTION    BY 

ROSSITER   W.    RAYMOND 


NEW   YORK:    FORDS,    HOWARD, 
AND   HULBERT  ^   m  dccc  xcviii 


Copyright,  in  1897, 

BY 

Fords,  Howard,  and  Hulbert. 


PUBLISHERS'  PREFACE. 

The  expansion  both  of  knowledge  and  of 
wisdom  in  all  departments  of  life  during  the 
Nineteenth  Century  has  nowhere  been  more 
manifest  than  in  religious  matters.  The 
general  mental  attitude  in  nearly  all  com- 
munions has  changed,  towards  God  and 
towards  man.  The  result  is  an  immense 
increase  of  vital  interest,  with  a  correspond- 
ing decline  in  mere  formalism. 

This  is  particularly  noticeable  in  two 
directions.  One  is  that,  where  formerly  the 
more  conscientious  professing  Christians 
would  "read  a  chapter"  in  the  Bible  with  a 
comfortable  sense  of  duty  done,  now  thou- 
sands. Christians  and  others,  are  studying 
those  ancient  scriptures  with  discrimination, 
yet  with  genuine  delight  in  their  treasures 
• — of  allegory,   of  biography,  of  history,  of 

•  •  • 

111 


IV  PUBLISHERS'    PREFACE. 

literature,  of  spiritual  instruction  and  in- 
spiration. Whether  as  cause  or  as  conse- 
quence, is  the  other:  that  the  pregnant 
practical  teachings  of  the  Master  himself  are 
looked  to  for  ''standards"  of  faith  and  doc- 
trine, rather  than  the  ingenious  speculations 
of  his  followers,  however  saintly  or  learned. 

Jesus  had  no  time  for  rhetoric.  His  brief 
sayings  are  compact  of  germinant  life.  One 
of  them — perhaps  as  characteristic  of  his 
whole  career  as  any — is  that  "The  Sabbath 
was  made  for  man,  not  man  for  the  Sab- 
bath." The  principle  involved  in  this 
maxim  is  that  which  has  developed  into  the 
splendid  humanitarianism  of  Christian  life 
and  work  to-day:  although  its  full  meaning 
is  yet  to  appear. 

Like  all  the  enlargement  of  the  physical 
and  psychical  sciences  during  the  past  cen- 
tury, the  religious  growth  has  been  greatest 
— or  by  reason  of  multiplied  ramifications 
most  discernible— within  the  latter  half  of 
that  period.  It  was  natural,  then,  that  the 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  inauguration  of  so 


PUBLISHERS'   PREFACE,  V 

potent  an  influence  as  Plymouth  Church  and 
the  coming  of  its  first  pastor  should  offer 
an  occasion  for  reviewing  at  large  the  vast 
spiritual  migration  of  multitudes  of  Chris- 
tian pilgrims  to  **  fresh  fields  and  pastures 
new."  And  the  occasion  would  lack  its 
best  worth  if  this  did  not  include  a  look 
forward  to  coming  duties  and  privileges. 
During  that  celebration,  therefore,  both 
retrospect  and  prospect — the  past  century 
and  the  coming  one — were  set  forth  by 
men  of  acknowledged  eminence,  whose 
broad  views  will  attract  and  interest  think- 
ing people.  It  was  inevitable  that  the 
speakers  should  find  special  concern  with 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  and  Plymouth  Church ; 
not,  however,  merely  because  these  were  at 
the  focal  point  of  the  occasion,  but  because 
in  any  consideration  of  morals  and  religion 
in  America  during  the  past  half-century  **  he 
reckons  ill  who  leaves  [them]  out.** 

The  Addresses  pertaining  to  the  celebra- 
tion have  been  gathered  into  this  volume. 
Concerning  the   particular  relations  of  the 


Vi  PUBLISHERS'   PREFACE. 

speakers  to  that  church  and  its  first  pastor, 
as  well  as  to  the  themes  assigned  them,  the 
publishers  are  glad  to  present  an  introduc- 
tory paper  from  Dr.  R.  W.  Raymond, — for 
forty-two  years  a  member  of  the  church,  an 
intimate  friend  of  both  the  first  and  the 
present  pastor,  and  a  recognized  leader  in 
the  brotherhood,  not  only  intellectually  and 
spiritually,  but  in  the  practical  organiza- 
tion and  administration  of  the  work  of  the 
church. 

The  larger  bearings  of  these  Addresses — 
those  indeed  for  which  they  were  mainly 
planned  and  of  which  they  chiefly  and  ably 
treat — will  be  evident  from  their  titles,  and 
still  more  from  their  admirable  contents. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

PUBLISHERS'    PREFACE iii 

INTRODUCTORY:    Rossiter  W.  Raymond    ^ ix 

I.  THE  NEW  PURITANISM:   Lyman  Ab- 
bott    23 

II.   PURITAN     PRINCIPLES     AND     THE 
MODERN  WORLD:  Amory  h/'Brad- 

FORD 75 

III.  BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE  UPON  RE- 
LIGIOUS THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND: 
Charles  A.  Berry 107 

IV.  THE  THEOLOGICAL    PROBLEM  FOR 

TO-DAY:    George  A.  Gordon  .     .     .  141 

V.  THE    SOCIAL     PROBLEMS    OF    THE 

FUTURE:  Washington  Gladden    .     .   173 

VI.  THE     CHURCH     OF    THE    FUTURE: 

William  J.  Tucker 213 

VII.  RETROSPECT        AND         OUTLOOK: 

Charles  A.  Berry ,  237 

VIII.  THE  DESCENT  FROM  THE  MOUNT: 

Lyman  Abbott 253 

vii 


Ifntro^uctor^^ 

ROSSITER   W.  RAYMOND. 


INTRODUCTORY. 

The  occasion,  though  not  directly  the 
topic,  of  the  addresses  contained  in  this 
volume  was  the  semi-centennial  jubilee  of 
Plymouth  Church.  The  story  of  the  origin 
of  the  church,  as  briefly  outlined  in  the 
Outlook  of  Nov.  13,  1897,  is  as  follows: 

"  A  Brooklyn  merchant  had  accidentally  heard 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  in  Indianapolis,  and  the 
hearing  had  aroused  his  desire  to  bring  the  al- 
most boyish  preacher  to  New  York.  The  un- 
suspecting candidate  for  the  pulpit  of  a  not  yet 
existing  church  was  invited  to  deliver  an  address 
before  one  of  the  missionary  societies  at  the  then 
famous  May  meetings.  He  came  east  for  this 
purpose.  Meanwhile,  a  few  gentlemen  interested 
in  this  Christian  conspiracy  met  at  a  private 
house  on  the  8th  of  May,  1847,  and  decided  then 
and  there  to  purchase  a  church  building  on 
Cranberry  Street,  which  the  First  Presbyterian 
Church  had  just  vacated,  in  order  to  follow  the 
population  to  a  more  favorable  location  upon  the 
Heights.  A  week  later  (May  16,  1847)  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  preached  in  this  church  building 

xi 


Xll  IN  TROD  UCTOR  V. 

his  first  sermon  in  Brooklyn.  Plymouth  Church, 
however,  was  not  organized  until  nearly  a  month 
later  (June  13)  ;  the  following  day,  Mr.  Beecher 
was  called  to  its  pastorate,  but  did  not  accept 
the  call  until  August;  he  began  his  labors  on 
October  10,  and  was  installed  by  Council  Nov. 
11/' 

This  series  of  events  was  follovi^ed  ap- 
proximately in  the  recent  celebration,  which 
comprised: 

1.  A  memorial  prayer-meeting  of  the 
church,  held  Friday  evening,  May  7,  in 
commemoration  of  the  original  conference 
of  May  8,  1847. 

2.  Services  on  Sunday,  May  16,  the 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  Mr.  Beecher's  first 
sermon  in  Brooklyn.  In  the  morning.  Rev. 
Lyman  Abbott,  D.D.,  pastor  of  Plymouth 
Church,  preached  on  ''  The  New  Puritan- 
ism " ;  in  the  evening,  Rev.  Amory  H. 
Bradford,  of  Montclair,  N.  J.,  preached 
on  "  Puritan  Principles  and  the  Modern 
World." 

3.  Services  on  Sunday,  November  7,  at 
which    Rev.    Charles   A.    Berry,    D.D.,    of 


INTROD  UCTOR  V.  XUl 

Wolverhampton,  England,  preached  morn- 
ing and  evening,  his  theme  in  the  morning 
being  "The  Influence  of  Henry  Ward 
Beecher's  Teaching  on  Religious  Life  and 
Thought  in  England,"  and  in  the  evening 
"  The  Secret  of  the  Power  of  the  Christian 
Church."  The  morning  service  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  administration  of  the  Lord's 

Supper. 

4.  On  Thursday  evening,  November  11, 
the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  installation  of 
Henry  Ward  Beecher,  a  service  at  which 
addresses  were  made  by  Rev.  George  A. 
Gordon,  D.D.,  of  Boston,  Mass.,  on  "  The 
Theology  for  To-day  " ;  by  Rev.  Washing- 
ton Gladden,  D.D.,  on  "  The  Social  Prob- 
lems of  the  P'uture  " ;  and  by  Rev.  William 
J.  Tucker,  D.D.,  President  of  Dartmouth 
College,  on  "  The  Church  of  the  Future." 

5.  On  Friday  evening,  November  12,  a 
prayer-meeting  of  the  church,  to  express 
gratitude  for  the  past  and  renewed  conse- 
cration for  the  future. 

Concerning    the    distinguished    speakers 


XIV  IN  TROD  UCrOR  K. 

named  above,  little  need  be  said  to  explain 
the  invitation  extended  to  them  by  Ply- 
mouth Church.  The  wisdom  of  that  invi- 
tation is  vindicated  by  the  results  here 
gathered  for  publication. 

Dr.  Bradford  is  a  friend  of  many  years,  to 
Plymouth  Church,  to  Mr.  Beecher,  and  to 
Mr.  Beecher's  successor;  and  his  splendidly 
earnest  and  active  church  in  Montclair  con- 
tains many  emigrants  from  Plymouth,  who 
have  found  themselves  in  no  strange  atmos- 
phere by  reason  of  their  change  of  residence. 
His  work  and  his  books  have  caused  him  to 
be  recognized  as  a  representative  Christian 
pastor,  as  well  as  teacher. 

Dr.  Berry,  by  virtue  of  official  position 
as  well  as  of  acknowledged  eminence,  may 
claim  to  speak  for  the  Congregational 
churches  of  the  country  where  Congrega- 
tionalism originated,  and  therefore  to  meas- 
ure truly  and  report  fairly  the  progress  and 
tendency  of  those  bodies.  But  he  is  dear 
to  Plymouth  for  other  reasons.  He  was 
not  yet  thirty-five  years  of  age  when  Henry 


INTRODUCTORY.  XV 

Ward  Beecher,   deeply  impressed  with   his 
eloquence,    invited   him   to   visit   America, 
and  preach  in  Plymouth  Church.      The  invi- 
tation   was    accepted;     but    Mr.    Beecher's 
death  intervened  before  the  promise  given 
could    be    fulfilled.       When,    after    several 
months,  the  young  minister  came,  his  per- 
sonal magnetism  and  apostolic  fervor  found 
instant    recognition,    and     he    received    an 
enthusiastic    call  to  the    Plymouth    pulpit. 
This    call,   which,   after  due  consideration, 
he    declined,    was    followed   by   a   widened 
sphere    of    activity    and    fame    in    his    own 
country:  and  after  the  lapse  of  a  decade, 
Plymouth    Church    was    glad    to    welcome 
again,  in  the  vigor  of  his  prime,  him  whom 
it    had    loved    in    his    ardent    youth.     The 
urgent    requests    pressed    upon    him    from 
every  quarter,  during  his  six  weeks'  stay  in 
this   country,   and   the  interest   excited   by 
his  numerous  public  addresses  during  that 
period,    in    New    York,     Montclair,     New 
Haven,  Boston,  Chicago,  Washington,  etc., 
have    confirmed    the    reputation    he     had 


XVI  IN  TROD  UCTOR  V. 

already    gained    among    American    Chris- 
tians. 

Dr.  Gordon,  whose  ministrations  in  the 
historic  Old  South  Church  of  Boston,  not 
less  than  his  published  lectures  and  essays, 
have  put  him  in  the  forefront  among  modern 
theological  thinkers,  was  preeminently  quali- 
fied to  clothe  the  old  faith  in  the  terms  of 
the  new  philosophy. 

Dr.    Gladden,    identified    not   only    with 
liberal  conceptions  of  Christian   truth,   but 
yet  more  with  liberal  applications  of  it  to 
modern  social  needs,  was  the  fit  mouthpiece 
for  the  Divine  message,  calling  the  church 
of  Christ  to  wider  fields  and  fresh  endeavors. 
President    Tucker  was    the    author  of    a 
notable   address    delivered  some    years  ago 
before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Association  of 
Harvard    University,    and    one    of    the   in- 
spirers    and     founders    of    that    *'  Andover 
House  "  which  is  to-day,  under  a  different 
name,  doing  in  the  city  of  Boston  a  prac- 
tical work  for  Christ,  and  has  set  the  exam- 
ple for  the  similar  work  carried  on  by  Union 


INTRODUCTORY.  XVU 

Theological  Seminary  in  the  city  of  New- 
York.  These  and  other  services  marked 
him  as  a  prophet,  bearing  a  word  of  the 
Lord  concerning  the  church  of  the  future. 

A  simple  inspection  of  this  list  of  orators 
and  topics  will  show  that  the  semi-centen- 
nial jubilee  of  Plymouth  Church  was  not 
planned  to  be  a  glorification  of  its  history, 
or  of  its  beloved  first  pastor,  or  of  his  suc- 
cessor. Indeed,  these  causes  for  pride  and 
gratitude  are  so  vividly  and  perpetually 
present  in  the  consciousness  of  its  members, 
that  they  do  not  need  to  be  recalled  by 
formal  celebration.  It  was  deemed  a 
worthier  use  of  the  occasion  to  devote  it 
largely  to  the  recognition  and  declaration  of 
the  ideals  toward  which  the  church  is  striv- 
ing In  Its  Inner  life  and  outward  activities,  to 
the  demonstration  of  its  agreement  in  this 
faith  and  practice  with  the  working  churches 
of  two  continents,  to  the  contemplation  of 
its  own  duties,  present  and  future,  and  to  a 
solemn  self-consecration  for  yet  higher  and 
more  fruitful  service. 


XVIU  INTRODUCTORY. 

That  this  was  the  fittest  commemoration 
of  Henry  Ward  Beecher's  Hfe  and  work,  no 
one  familiar  with  the  history  of  Plymouth 
Church   for  the  past  ten  years  can   doubt. 
It  is  well  known  that,  at  the  time  of  Mr. 
Beecher*s  death,  few  persons  outside  of  the 
church  believed  that  it  could    continue  to 
be  what,  under  the  inspiration  of  his  leader- 
ship,   it     had     been.       Besides    those    less 
friendly  observers,   who,   deeming  it  but  a 
heterogeneous    assemblage,    held     together 
by  the  magnetism  of  one  man,  prophesied 
that  it  would  fall  to  pieces  when  his  pres- 
ence was  withdrawn,  there  were  among  its 
sympathizing  friends  few,   if  any,  who  did 
not    sorrowfully    anticipate    at    least    some 
measure     of    retreat,    some    diminution    of 
activity,   some  loss  of  power,  some  partial 
surrender   of   the   field  of  work,   perhaps  a 
necessary    change     of     locality,     involving 
almost  a  practical  sacrifice  of  the  continuity 
and  identity  of  the  life  of  the  church.     Such 
apprehensions  were  natural  enough  to  those 
who  did  not  understand  what  had  been  the 


INTROD  UCTOR  V.  XIX 

real  result  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher's  pas- 
toral work  of  forty  years.  He  had  recruited 
and  organized,  trained  and  disciplined  and 
led  an  army  of  Christian  soldiers,  which  did 
not  dream  of  retreating  or  surrendering  or 
disbanding  because  its  captain  had  fallen  on 
the  field.  The  church  was  neither  a  crowd, 
fascinated  by  oratory,  nor  a  throng  of 
friends,  held  by  loving  admiration  of  their 
friend,  nor  a  philanthropic  society,  trying  a 
benevolent  experiment,  and  dependent  upon 
advertising  and  popular  support.  It  was 
an  organized  body  of  working  Christians — 
''heterogeneous  "  indeed,  as  a  church  ought 
to  be,  and  held  together  by  loyalty  to  one 
person;  but  that  person  was  the  living, 
present  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  A  striking  and 
conclusive  proof  of  the  truth  of  this  propo- 
sition is  the  fact  that  although,  ten  years 
ago,  the  surrounding  air  was  laden  with  pre- 
dictions and  suggestions  of  retreat,  no  word 
of  that  kind  was  heard  from  within  the 
church.  In  its  crowded  meetings,  no  voice 
intimated  fear  of  failure.      Its  animated  dis- 


XX  INTRO D  UCTOR  V. 

cussions  all  terminated  in  practically  unan- 
imous decisions.  The  writer,  as  chairman 
of  the  Advisory  Committee  of  the  church 
during  this  period  of  its  fancied  peril,  had 
ample  opportunity  to  know  the  temper  of 
his  brethren,  and  bears  joyful  testimony  to 
their  unswerving,  undaunted,  and  undivided 
enthusiasm  of  service. 

Ten  years  have  proved  that  this  enthusi- 
asm was  not  a  flash,  but  a  glow.  Plymouth 
Church,  originally  established  in  a  locality 
abandoned  as  unfavorable  to  such  an  enter- 
prise, still  holds  its  post,  finding  its  warrant 
in  the  work  which  lies  about  its  doors. 
Some  of  its  members  come  many  miles  to 
their  worship  and  labors — the  average  dis- 
tance considerably  exceeds  a  mile.  Yet 
not  one  of  the  branches  of  church-work 
established  by  Mr.  Beecher  has  been  dis- 
continued; and  new  ones  have  been  added 
to  the  list.  The  social  and  the  spiritual  life 
of  the  church  are  undiminished  in  vigor; 
and  it  still  enjoys  abundant  comment  and 
advice  from  the  newspapers,  which  may  be 


INTRODUCTORY,  '   XXI 

taken  as  evidence  that  it  still  exerts  an  in- 
fluence upon  the  community. 

Certainly  this  survival  of  a  church  sup- 
posed to  be  doomed  to  decline  or  decay  is 
a  phenomenon  worth  noting;  and  it  is  fair 
to  presume  that  the  Divine  blessing,  to 
which,  above  all,  success  has  been  due,  has 
been  bestowed  upon  the  continued  preach- 
ing of  what  Dr.  Berry  calls  ''  the  credible 
and  beautiful  gospel  "  of  which  Mr.  Beecher 
was  an  apostle,  upon  Christian  lives  inspired 
by  that  teaching,  and  upon  conceptions  and 
methods  of  church-work  suited  to  the  con- 
ditions and  demands  of  our  time. 

The  services  connected  with  the  late 
semi-centennial  jubilee,  taken  together,  pre- 
sented a  comprehensive  picture  of  such  a 
church  as  Plymouth  has  been  or  aims  to 
become.  Perhaps  the  most  characteristic 
features  of  this  picture  were  those  which  are 
not  included  in  the  present  volume— the 
testimony,  the  aspiration,  the  brotherly 
love,  expressed  in  the  prayer-meetings  of 
the  church  itself.     Nor  should  it  be  inferred 


XXU  INTROD  UCTOR  Y. 

that  the  addresses  here  given  constitute  a 
formal  and  official  programme  of  this  church. 
Nevertheless,  they  do  express,  with  indi- 
vidual variety  and  freedom,  the  general 
standpoint  and  attitude  of  Plymouth  Church, 
present,  past,  and  future.  It  has  stood  for 
liberty  and  progress  in  theological  thought; 
for  the  application  of  the  principles  and  pre- 
cepts of  Jesus  Christ  to  social  questions  as 
well  as  to  single  lives;  and  for  the  right 
and  duty  of  the  church  to  employ  all  meas- 
ures and  all  instruments  which  can  be  con- 
secrated to  the  service  of  God  and  of 
humanity.  It  has  welcomed  the  light,  and 
followed  its  kindly  leading.  It  has  tried  to 
do  Christ's  work,  in  Christ's  way,  in  his 
name,  and  with  his  help.  And  to  this 
high  calling  it  now  gratefully  girds  itself 
anew. 

R.  W.  Raymond. 

Brooklyn,  November  27,  1897. 


Ube  IFlew  Puritanism* 

LYMAN  ABBOTT. 


I. 

Ube  1Rew  purttautsm*' 

By  LYMAN  ABBOTT,  D.D., 
Of  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

And  he  gave  some,  apostles;  and  some, 
prophets;  and  some,  evangelists;  and  some,  pas- 
tors and  teachers  ;  for  the  perfecting  of  the 
saints,  for  the  work  of  the  ministry,  for  the 
edifying  of  the  body  of  Christ:  till  we  all  come 
in  the  unity  of  the  faith,  and  of  the  knowledge 
of  the  Son  of  God,  unto  a  perfect  man,  unto  the 
measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ. 
— Ephesiafis,  iv  :  ii,  12,  13. 

Fifty  years  ago  to-day,  in  this  very 
place,  though  not  in  this  building,  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  preached  his  first  sermon  in 
Brooklyn.      That  fact  suggests  the  text  and 


*  Plymouth  Church,  Sunday  morning,  May  16,  1897. 
Reported  by  Henry  Winans;  revised  by  the  author. 

25 


26  THE   NEW  PURITANISM. 

the  theme  for  this  occasion.  I  am  not 
going,  however,  to  preach  a  sermon  of 
reminiscences,  nor  to  speak  to-day  to  the 
older  members  of  Plymouth  Church.  I  am 
somewhat  doubtful  about  the  value  of  such 
reminiscences,  somewhat  doubtful  about 
the  value  of  endeavoring  to  live  over  the 
past.  A  generation  has  grown  up  who  do 
not  know  that  past,  who  do  not  know  out 
of  what  the  Church  of  Christ  has  come 
into  its  present  light  and  life  and  liberty, 
and  who  are  not,  therefore,  able  to  discern 
the  tendencies  of  to-day,  because  they  do 
not  understand  the  history  of  yesterday. 
It  is  to  this  generation  I  speak  this  morn- 
ing, for  the  purpose  of  pointing  out  to 
them,  as  well  as  I  can  within  the  limits  of  a 
discourse  not  to  be  unduly  prolonged,  what 
has  been  that  transition  from  the  old  Puri- 
tanism to  the  new  Puritanism,  in  which, 
as  I  think,  Mr.  Beecher  and  Plymouth 
Church  have  taken  no  inconsiderable  part. 

John  Calvin  declared  that  man  had  lost 
his  freedom  in  the  Fall;  he  was  no  longer 


THE   NEW  PURITANISM.  27 

a  free  moral  agent.'  Whatever  else  may- 
be said  respecting  Calvinism,  it  was  at  least 
logical  and  self-consistent,  and  the  doctrine 
of  John  Calvin,  incorporated  in  the  West- 
minster Confession  of  Faith,  remains  there 
to  the  present  day.  Jonathan  Edwards  in 
the  middle  of  the  last  century  gave  philo- 
sophic exposition  to  the  dogmatic  declara- 
tion of  Calvin.'  He  possessed  what  Calvin 
lacked — a  spiritual  imagination.  He  was 
philosopher  rather  than  dogmatist.  His 
argument  in  his  famous  treatise  on  the 
Freedom  of  the  Will  may  be  put  very 
tersely — at  least  for  the  purposes  of  this 
morning:  Every  phenomenon  has  its  cause; 
therefore,  said  Edwards,  every  volition  of 
the  will  must  have  a  cause.  The  man's 
will  is  controlled,  as  everything  else  is  con- 


'  "  Man  is  not  possessed  of  free  will  for  good 
works,  unless  he  be  assisted  by  grace,  and  that 
special  grace  which  is  bestowed  on  the  elect  alone  in 
regeneration."  —  Calvin's  Institutes,  vol.  ii.  p.  238. 

'  The  reader  who  has  not  time  to  read  Jonathan 
Edwards*  Works  will  find  a  full  and  sympathetic, 
though  critical,  interpretation  of  them  in  Dr.  A.  V.  G, 
Allen's  Life  of  Jonathan  Edwards, 


2b  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

trolled.  He  must  decide  according  to  the 
strongest  motive;  because  if  he  did  not 
decide  according  to  the  strongest  motive, 
then  he  would  decide  according  to  a  motive 
weaker  than  the  stronger,  and  that  is  a  self- 
contradiction.  Man  therefore  has  no  free- 
dom of  the  will.  Freedom — so  Jonathan 
Edwards  argued — consists  in  power  to  do 
what  you  will;  it  does  not  consist  in  power 
to  will  what  you  will  do.  The  power  which 
Chrysostom  affirmed  in  the  will,  to  choose 
between  good  and  evil,  Jonathan  Edwards 
explicitly  and  in  terms  denied.  This  denial 
was  the  crucial  point,  the  foundation-doc- 
trine of  the  old  Puritanism.  Man  had  lost 
his  freedom;  he  was  no  longer  able  to 
choose  the  right  and  eschew  the  wrong;  he 
could  not  repent;  he  could  not  do  virtuous 
deeds;  he  could  not  accept  God's  grace;  he 
could  do  nothing.  But  God  in  his  infinite 
mercy  was  pleased  to  rescue  some  men  from 
this  state  of  servitude.  He  was  not  pleased 
to  rescue  all;  he  was  not  under  any  obliga- 
tion   to    rescue    any.      Man  was    culpable, 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM,  29 

although  he  could  not  choose.  God  was 
pleased  by  a  miraculous  act  of  grace  to 
select  some  men  and  take  them  out  of  this 
bondage,  this  life  of  servitude,  and  put 
them  into  a  new  life.  These  men  were  the 
chosen;  they  were  God's  elect.  The  men 
whom  God  had  not  chosen  thus  to  select 
and  rescue  by  a  miraculous  act  of  grace  were 
hopelessly  and  eternally  lost.  Man  him- 
self had  no  more  power  to  repent  and  begin 
a  new  life  than  Lazarus  had  to  come  forth 
out  of  his  tomb  before  Christ  had  said  to 
him,  Lazarus,  arise!  and  no  more  power  to 
stay  unrepentant,  when  Christ  had  called 
him  to  repentance,  than  Lazarus  would 
have  had  to  remain  in  the  sleep  of  death 
after  Christ  had  said,  Lazarus,  come  forth ! 
The  grace  that  summoned  men  was  an  irre- 
sistible grace.  If  summoned  they  could  not 
help  but  come,  and  not  one  could  come 
unless  so  summoned. 

In  the  old  Puritanism  this  was  not  an 
abstract  doctrine,  held  only  by  metaphy- 
sicians and  confined  to  scholastic  discussion. 


30  THE   NEW  PURITANISM. 

It  was  embodied  in  the  practical  ministry 

of  the   churches   in    the    earlier  history  of 

New  England.     A  simple   extract  from   a 

practical  sermon  by  an  eminent  preacher  of 

New  England  of  the  seventeenth  century, 

the    Rev.    Thomas    Shepherd,    one    of    the 

founders  of  Harvard  College,  will  illustrate 

this.      Imagine   it    preached   to-day  in  the 

chapel  of  that  university: 

*'  Oh  thou  mayest  wish  and  desire  to  come 
out  sometime,  but  canst  not  put  strength  to  thy 
desire,  nor  indure  to  doe  it.  Thou  mayest  hang 
down  thy  head  like  a  Bulrush  for  sin,  but  thou 
canst  not  repent  of  sin;  thou  mayest  presume 
but  thou  canst  not  beleeve;  thou  mayest  come 
half  way,  and  forsake  some  sins,  but  not  all 
sins  ;  thou  mayest  come  &  knock  at  heaven 
gate,  as  th.Q  foolish  virgins  did,  but  not  enter  in 
and  passe  through  the  gate;  thou  mayest  see 
the  land  of  Canaan,  &  take  much  pain  to  goe 
into  Canaan,  and  mayest  tast  of  the  bunches  of 
Grapes  of  that  good  land,  but  never  enter  into 
Canaan,  into  Heaven,  but  thou  liest  bound  hand 
and  foot  in  this  woful  estate,  and  here  thou 
must  lie  and  rot  like  a  dead  carkasse  in  his 
grave,  untill  the  Lord  come  and  rowle  away  the 
stone,  and  bid  thee  come  out  and  live.' 


>>  I 


'  Quoted   in  Some  Aspects  of  the   Religious  Life  of 
New  England,  by  George  Leon  Walker,  D.D.,  p.  23. 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  3^ 

This  doctrine  Is   no  longer   preached    In 
our   churches;    but   it  Is   still   preserved   in 
some  of  our  creeds.      Its  philosophy  is  em- 
bodied In  that  Westminster  Confession  of 
Faith,  which  we  might  all  be  glad  to  recog- 
nize as  an  honest  and  able  attempt  In  the 
seventeenth  century  to  systematize  religious 
philosophy,  but  which  we  must  declare  to 
be  heresy  when  men  still  demand  adhesion 
to  it  as  the  best  embodiment  possible  In  our 
times,  of  the  glorious  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ. 
This  is  what  the  Westminster  Confession  of 
Faith  declares  on  this  subject, — that  Con- 
fession of  Faith  which  is  accepted  for  sub- 
stance of  doctrine   by  a  very  considerable 
proportion  of  the  religious  teachers  of  this 
country,  and  is  even  exalted  to  be  a  stand- 
ard of  faith  by  some  Congregational  mln- 
isters : 

"  Works  done  by  unregenerate  men,  although 
for  the  matter  of  them  they  may  be  things  which 
God  commands,  and  of  good  use  both  to  them- 
selves and  others;  yet  because  they  proceed  not 
from  a  heart  purified  by  faith,  nor  are  done  in  a 
right  manner,  according  to  the  Word,  nor  to  a 


32  THE   NEW  PURITANISM. 

right  end,  the  glory  of  God;  they  are  therefore 
sinful,  and  cannot  please  God,  or  make  a  man 
meet  to  receive  grace  from  God.  And  yet  their 
neglect  of  them  is  more  sinful  and  displeasing 
unto  God."  ' 

The  Psalmist  had  said,  **  He  that  hath 
clean  hands  and  a  pure  heart,  who  hath  not 
lifted  up  his  soul  unto  vanity,  nor  sworn 
deceitfully,  he  shall  receive  the 'blessing 
from  the  Lord,  and  righteousness  from  the 
God  of  his  salvation."  But  the  old  Puri- 
tanism said  No !  Though  he  wash  his  hands, 
though  he  cleanse  his  life,  though  he  walk 
according  to  his  conscience,  this  is  not 
a  ground  on  which  he  can  receive  grace 
from  God.  The  prophet  Isaiah  had  said: 
**  Let  the  wicked  forsake  his  way,  and  the 
unrighteous  man  his  thoughts:  and  let  him 
return  unto  the  Lord,  and  he  will  have 
mercy  upon  him,  and  to  our  God,  for  he 
will  abundantly  pardon."  But  the  old 
Puritanism  declared  that  that  was  only  said 
in   order  to  deepen  the  despair  of  men,  for 


*   West,  Conf.  of  Faith,  ch.  xvi,  §  vii. 


THE   NEW  PURITANISM,  33 

no  unrighteous  man  can  forsake  his  evil 
way,  and  no  wicked  man  can  abandon  his 
evil  thoughts. 

Thus  a  system  of  fatalism  had  grown  up 
and  been  wrought  out  in  the  old  Puritanism, 
as  absolutely  fatalistic  as  the  modern  Neces- 
sarianism.  The  old  Puritanism  said,  as 
modern  Necessarianism  says,  that  man  is  the 
creature  of  his  heredity  and  of  his  environ- 
ment, but  it  added  that  they  are  both  hope- 
lessly bad.  It  declared  that  man  is  the  son 
of  a  fallen  race,  and  has  inherited  nothing 
but  depravity  from  his  parents;  is  a  member 
of  a  fallen  race,  and  is  surrounded  by  noth- 
ing but  depravity  in  the  community.  He 
is  the  creature  of  his  heredity,  and  that  is 
depraved ;  he  is  the  creature  of  his  environ- 
ment, and  that  is  depraved  ;  there  is  no  hope 
for  him,  unless  by  a  miraculous  act  of 
supernatural  power  he  is  taken  out  of  his 
heredity  and  out  of  his  environment:  and 
whether  this  miraculous  grace  will  thus 
rescue  any  particular  man  or  not,  no  man 
can  tell.     Nothing  that  he  can  do,  nothing 


34  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

that  any  one  can  do  for  him,  will  help  or 
hasten  this  miraculous  process. 

As  to  infants  there  was  a  hot  debate, 
which,  so  far  as  the  Westminster  Confession 
of  Faith  was  concerned,  was  settled  by  a 
compromise — by  the  declaration  that  elect 
infants  dying  in  infancy  are  saved,  leaving 
those  who  thought  there  were  no  elect 
infants  to  say  they  are  not  elect,  and  those 
who  thought  that  all  infants  are  elect  to  say 
they  are  all  saved,  and  those  who  thought 
that  some  are  elect  and  some  not,  to  say 
that  some  are  saved  and  some  not.  It  was 
one  of  the  cases  in  which  words  were  used 
not  in  a  double  but  in  a  triple  sense,  and 
each  man  might  take  the  meaning  he  pre- 
ferred. 

This  old  Puritanism,  fatalistic  in  the  very 
essence  of  its  philosophy,  of  course  regarded 
religion  as  something  unnatural.  It  did 
not  belong  to  man's  nature.  It  was  some- 
thing outside  and  beyond  him.  It  was, 
therefore,  something  outside  and  beyond 
reason.     As  he  could  not  arrive  at  righteous- 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  3S 

ness  by  any  obedience  to  law,  so  he  could 
not  arrive  at  truth  by  any  exercise  of  his 
reason.      Religion  was  wholly  supernatural, 
not  to  say  contranatural,  and  depravity  was 
wholly    natural.       Truth    was    wholly    the 
result  of  a  supernatural  revelation,  and  no 
man  could   arrive   at  truth   except   it  were 
supernaturally  revealed  to  him,  not  only  by 
the  Bible,  but  by  a  supernatural  grace  accom- 
panying the  Bible.     It  was  not  enough  that 
he  had  the  Bible,  and  that  he  had  preachers 
to  interpret  the  Bible,  and  a  natural  inclina- 
tion to  accept  the  teachings  of  the  Bible; 
he  must  have  in  addition  miraculous  light 
streaming  down  upon  him  from  God  on  the 
pages  of  the  Bible  and  into  his  heart  and 
his  understanding,  or  the  truth  and  the  de- 
sire   to   understand   and    receive   and   obey 
the  truth  were  all  of  no  avail,  for  he  had 
not  any  capacity  to  perceive  or  understand 
or  receive  the  truth  except  as   it  was  super- 
naturally bestowed   upon   him   in   regenera- 
tion.     The  light  of  nature  was  not  enough, 
nor  the  Bible  enough,  nor  these  two  enough, 


36  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

even  when  aided  by  some  ''common  opera- 
tions of  the  Spirit."  Upon  this  point  the 
Westminster  Confession  of  Faith  is  as  ex- 
plicit as  upon  the  others.  Indeed,  the  two 
are  logically  and  necessarily  connected : 

"Others,  not  elected,  although  they  may  be 
called  by  the  ministry  of  the  Word,  and  may 
have  some  common  operations  of  the  Spirit,  yet 
they  never  truly  come  unto  Christ,  and  therefore 
cannot  be  saved;  much  less  can  men  not  pro- 
fessing the  Christian  religion  be  saved  in  any 
other  way  whatsoever,  be  they  never  so  diligent 
to  frame  their  lives  according  to  the  light  of 
nature  and  the  law  of  that  religion  they  do  pro- 
fess; and  to  assert  and  maintain  that  they  may 
is  very  pernicious  and  to  be  detested.' 


>>  1 


This  fatalistic  religion  did  not  accomplish 
that  which  has  been  claimed  for  the  old 
Puritanism.  In  the  beginning  of  the  present 
century  intemperance  was  common  —  far 
more  common  than  to-day,  not  only  out- 
side the  church,  but  inside  the  church;  and, 
according  to  the  testimony  of  Dr.  Lyman 
Beecher,    at    ordination   services    the    side- 


*  West.  Con/,  of  Faith,  ch.  X,  §  iv. 


7^ HE  NEW  PURITANISM.  37 

board  of  the  pastor  looked  and  smelled  like 
the  bar  of  a  grog-shop ;  and  he  adds:  ''  None 
of  the  Consociation  were  drunk;  but  that 
there  was  not,  at  times,  a  considerable 
amount  of  exhilaration,  I  cannot  affirm."' 
Slavery  was  extending  its  black  cloud  over 
one  half  the  continent,  and  the  Church,  at 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  was 


'  "  At  the  ordination  at  Plymouth,  the  preparation 
for  our  creature  comforts,  in  the  sitting-room  of  Mr. 
Heart's  house,  besides  food,  was  a  broad  sideboard 
covered  with  decanters  and  bottles,  and  sugar,  and 
pitchers,  of  water.  There  we  found  all  the  various 
kinds  of  liquors  then  in  vogue.  The  drinking  was 
apparently  universal.  This  preparation  was  made  by 
the  society  as  a  matter  of  course.  When  the  Con- 
sociation arrived,  they  always  took  something  to 
drink  round;  also  before  public  services,  and  always 
on  their  return.  As  they  could  not  all  drink  at  once, 
they  were  obliged  to  stand  and  wait  as  people  do 
when  they  go  to  mill.  There  was  a  decanter  of 
spirits  also  on  the  dinner-table,  to  help  digestion, 
and  gentlemen  partook  of  it  through  the  afternoon 
and  evening  as  they  felt  the  need,  some  more  and 
some  less;  and  the  sideboard,  with  the  spillings  of 
water,  and  sugar,  and  liquor,  looked  and  smelled 
like  the  bar  of  a  very  active  grog-shop.  None  of  the 
Consociation  were  drunk;  but  that  there  was  not,  at 
times,  a  considerable  amount  of  exhilaration,  I  can- 
not affirm." — Autobiography  of  Lyttiaii  Beecher,  vol.  i., 
ch.  xxxvii.,  p.  245. 


38  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

generally  silent.  Dr.  Hopkins  of  brave 
memory  raised  his  voice  against  slavery: 
but  then  Dr.  Hopkins  was  not  orthodox — 
he  was  also  at  the  same  time  writing  two 
volumes  entitled  TJie  Nezv  Divinity.  The 
heresy  and  the  moral  reform  were  going 
along  together.  There  were  no  missionary 
organizations,  either  home  or  foreign;  and 
when  first  the  attempt  was  made  to  organ- 
ize a  foreign  missionary  organization,  the 
preachers  of  fatalism  protested  against  it  as 
an  irreverent  attempt  to  interfere  with  the 
decrees  of  Almighty  God. 

Of  course  this  system  was  not  without 
some  compensating  advantages.  It  did  de- 
velop in  men  a  profound  sense,  if  a  somewhat 
morbid  sense,  of  their  guilt  and  sinfulness; 
it  did  develop  in  men  a  very  profound,  if 
not  altogether  healthful,  reverence  for  God. 
If  reverence  be  compounded,  as  the  philoso- 
phers tell  us  it  is,  partly  of  fear  and  partly 
of  love,  then  we  must  say  that  the  rever- 
ence of  the  old  Puritanism  was  mostly  fear 
and  very  little    love.      But    still   there  was 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM,  39 

reverence,  and  by  it  the  conscience  was 
made  strong,  and  when  the  conscience  was 
brought  to  bear  on  human  life  it  carried  with 
it  tremendous  sanction.  There  were  revi- 
vals of  religion  also ;  but  the  revivals  of  reli- 
gion were  generally  emotional  rather  than 
ethical.  They  were  transitions  from  a  state 
of  indifference,  through  a  state  of  despair 
and  a  state  of  exhilaration,  into  a  state  of 
peace.  Jonathan  Edwards,  in  his  book 
or  essay  on  Revivals,  gives  five  tests  of  a 
work  of  grace.  They  are  these:  first, 
increased  esteem  for  Christ;  second,  diminu- 
tion of  worldliness — by  which  he  means 
dancing,  card-playing,  and  the  like;  third, 
respect  for  the  Scriptures;  fourth,  reception 
of  the  truth — by  which  he  means  the  New 
England  system  of  theology;  and  fifth, 
love.  If  by  '*  love  "  he  had  meant  what  in 
these  later  days  we  mean,  we  might  have 
accepted  it  as  an  adequate  interpretation  of 
Christ's  saying:  "  By  their  fruits  ye  shall 
know  them."  But  he  does  not  mean  by 
'Move"    what   we    mean   by   ''love";    he 


40  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

does  not  define  it  as  Christ  defines  it  in  the 
parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan,  and  as  Paul 
defines  it  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  First 
Corinthians.       Love,    he  says,    is    spurious 
unless    it    is    ""  attended    with    a    sense    of 
our  own  unworthiness,  as  in  ourselves  the 
enemies  and  haters  of  God  and  Christ,  and 
with  a  renunciation  of  all  our  excellency  and 
righteousness."     Any   one   who  will   com- 
pare the  account  of  the  revivals  of  religion 
under  Jonathan  Edwards,  in   1740,  and  the 
revivals  of  religion  under  Dr.  Finney,  in  the 
early    part    of    this    century,    will    see    the 
radical  ethical  difference  between  the  two. 
The    system    of    theology    which    openly 
scorned   what   Dr.    Lyman   Beecher    called 
the  '*  natural  virtues  "  was  not  adapted  to 
do     much     toward     eradicating    "  natural 
vices."     After   one    of    Dr.    Finney's   ser- 
mons in  Oberlin,   the   people  of   the   town 
were  seen  the  next  morning  going  about  the 
village   returning   the   books  and  saws  and 
axes  which  they  had  borrowed.     No  such 
sign  of  revival  was  ever  witnessed,  I  venture 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  4I 

to    say,    under    the    preaching    of    the    old 
Puritanism. 

Ah'eqtdy  before  the  beginning  of  this  cen- 
tury the  old  Puritanism  had  created  a 
reaction.  We  seem  to  swing,  like  a  pen- 
dulum, back  and  forth,  and  never  stay 
stationary  in  the  center.  This  reaction  was 
seen  in  several  ways.  First,  in  a  blatant, 
irreverent,  blasphemous,  and  unintelligent 
infidelity.  Thomas  Paine's  Age  of  Rea- 
son was  finally  given  to  the  public  in  the 
year  1795.  While,  of  course,  some  of  its 
statements  are  accepted  to-day  —  for  no 
man,  however  great  his  genius,  can  write  a 
book  of  one  hundred  pages  and  not  say 
some  true  things — on  the  whole,  Paine's 
attitude  of  mind  is  repudiated  by  all  un- 
believers of  the  present  time,  unless  possi- 
bly I  except  Robert  IngersoU.  But  when 
it  was  published  Paine's  ^^^  of  Reason  was, 
perhaps,  the  most  popular  book  of  the  time. 
When  President  Dwight  took  the  presi- 
dency of  Yale  College,  it  is  said  that  there 
were  only  four  professing  Christians  in  the 


42  THE  NEW  PURITANISM, 

whole  College  and  two  Thomas  Paine  so- 
cieties; and  so  popular  was  French  infidelity 
that  a  number  of  leading  members  of  the 
senior  class  had  dropped  their  own  names 
and  taken  as  their  own,  those  of  leading 
French  infidels/ 

The  second  reaction  was  the  great  Meth- 
odist movement.  The  Methodism  which 
was  born  in  England  in  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  had  spread  to  the  United 
States  before  its  close.  It  denied  emphati- 
cally the  fatalism  of  Calvin  and  Edwards 
with  the  accompanying  doctrine  of  particu- 
lar election,  and  affirmed  in  the  most  vig- 
orous manner  the  freedom  of  volition  and 
the  universal  provision  of  divine  grace.  It 
transferred  responsibility  for  the  moral  ac- 
tion of  the  individual  from  God  to  man, 
and  in  this  was  its  power;  it  passed  by,  if 
it  did  not  ignore,  the  sovereignty  of  law 
and  the  Lawgiver  over  free  moral  agents, 
and  in  that  was  its  weakness. 


*  Life  of  Timothy  Diuight:  Introduction  to  D wight's 
Theology,  p.  20. 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  43 

This  movement  was  followed  by  one  more 
local  in  its  character,  the  Unitarian  revolt, 
in  the  beginning  of  the  present  century.  It 
was  confined  to  the  Puritan  churches  and, 
in  the  main,  to  those  of  New  England 
origin.  Under  the  leadership  of  Channing 
it  denied  the  Trinity,  but  not  the  divinity 
of  Christ.  Rather,  it  affirmed  the  inherent 
divinity  of  man.  It  did  not  stop  with 
declaring  that  man  preserved  freedom  of 
volition ;  it  also  declared  the  excellence  of 
the  ''natural  virtues**  which  Puritanism 
condemned,  and  affirmed  the  practical  and 
ethical  and  natural  character  of  religion. 
Says  its  great  leader.  Dr.  Channing:  "  I 
conceive  these  to  be  the  leading  principles 
of  modern  divinity:  practical  righteousness 
is  all  in  all,  and  every  system  which  em- 
braces motives  enough  to  a  good  practice  is 
sufficiently  correct.  Love  is  the  fulfilling  of 
the  law  and  of  the  gospel.  All  truth  is 
designed  to  excite  this  temper,  and  to  form 
the  habits  which  flow  from  it,  and  this  is  the 


44  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

only  test  which  we  fallible  mortals  can  apply 
to  doctrines." 

More  important  than  either  Methodism 
or  Unitarianism,  from  the  theological  point 
of  view,  was  that  revival  of  philosophy 
which  may  be  traced  back  to  Samuel  Taylor 
Coleridge  (i 8 16-1834),  in  the  first  quarter 
of  the  present  century,  though  it  includes 
among  its  apostles  such  men  as  Erskine  of 
Scotland,  Maurice  and  Stanley  in  England, 
Bushnell  and  Phillips  Brooks  in  America. 
Coleridge  parted  from  the  old  Puritanism 
in  his  fundamental  conception  of  both  man 
and  religion:  man  possesses  a  free  determin- 
ing creative  will,  which  is  the  secret  of  his 
spiritual,  godlike  nature.  If  he  has  not 
this  he  is  a  machine,  not  a  man:  neither 
amenable  to  moral  law  nor  capable  of  moral 
virtue.  Religion  is  the  supreme  life  of  this 
will,  its  highest  development,  and  so  man's 
highest  education.  Religion  therefore  rests, 
in  the  last  analysis,  not  upon  an  authority 
without, —  whether  of  church,  creed,  or 
Bible, — but  upon  the  reason  and  conscience 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  45 

of  man,  upon  his  own  spiritual  recognition 
of  and  deference  to  divine  law  and  divine 
truth.  If  he  has  not  a  natural  capacity  to 
perceive  and  receive  the  truth  he  has  no 
capacity  for  religion,  and  is  a  mere  higher 
animal,  not  a  man. 

Crossing  the  ocean  and  following  the  less 
philosophical  and  more  emotional  protest  of 
Methodism  and  the  less  spiritual  but  more 
purely  ethical  protest  of  Unitarianism,  both 
of  which  had  prepared  for  its  advent,  this 
rational    and    spiritual    philosophy    of    life 
mixed  with  and  modified  the  Old  Puritan- 
ism, making  of   it  a  New  Puritanism.     In 
the  transition  from  the  Old  to  the  New  such 
theological  teachers   as  Edwards   A.    Park, 
such  revival  preachers  as  Charles  G.  Finney, 
such  mediators  between  the  rationalist  and 
the  scholastic    theologian    as    Dr.    Lyman 
Beecher  and  Albert  Barnes  and  Horace  Bush- 
nell,  were  efficient  and  representative  factors. 
They  differed  widely  in  temperament,  and 
materially  in  philosophy;  but  they  agreed 
in  insisting  on  man's  free  will,  or  his  natural 


46  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

ability  to  choose  the  right  and  eschew  the 
wrong;  on  man's  personal  responsibility  for 
his  choice,  as  well  as  for  his  outward  actions; 
on  the  naturalness  of  religion  and  man's 
native,  inherent  capacity  for  it;  and  on  the 
natural  virtues  as  the  sole  satisfactory  evi- 
dence of  the  possession  of  supernatural 
grace.  For  this  teaching,  now  so  elemental 
in  Congregational  theology,  Drs.  Park,  and 
Finney,  and  Kirk,  and  Lyman  Beecher, 
and  Horace  Bushnell,  and  Mr.  Barnes  were 
all  accused  of  heresy,  and  Dr.  Lyman 
Beecher  and  Mr.  Barnes  were  put  on  trial 
in  the  Presbyterian  Church,  with,  as  a 
result,  the  division  in  1838  of  the  great 
Presbyterian  Church  into  two  churches, 
each  maintaining  the  same  General  Confes- 
sion, but  one  interpreting  it  according  to 
the  Old  Puritanism,  the  other  according  to 
the  New.  The  first  was  historically  accu- 
rate, but  was  unscriptural  and  unphilosoph- 
ical;  the  second  was  scripturally  and  philo- 
sophically   accurate,    but    departed    widely 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  47 

from  the  traditional  theology  and   historic 
standards  of  the  Church. 

The  ethical  reaction  against  the  Old  Puri- 
tanism was  quite  as  marked  as  the  theolog- 
ical reaction.  The  temperance  movement, 
though  by  no  means  confined  to  the  Puritan 
churches,  received  its  impulse  and  its  con- 
secration therefrom.  In  fifteen  years  after 
Lyman  Beecher  preached  his  ''six  sermons 
against  intemperance"  the  consumption  of 
strong  drink  in  New  England  had  decreased 
more  than  one  half /^r  capita.  In  the  Puri- 
tan churches,  if  we  may  include  the  Uni- 
tarian offshoots  from  Puritanism,  and  in  the 
Friends*  Meetings,  the  antislavery  move- 
ment also  received  its  chiefest  religious  im- 
pulse, and  almost  exclusively  in  the  churches 
of  the  New  Puritanism.  The  Old  School 
Church  was  an  apologist  if  not  a  defender 
of  slavery.  The  Congregational  churches 
which  adhered  to  the  Edwardsian  theology 
were  never  found  in  the  skirmish-line,  and 
rarely  in  attacking  column,  of  either  the 
temperance  or  the  antislavery  forces,  while 


48  THE   NEW  PURITANISM. 

Lyman  Beecher  and  Charles  G.  Finney,  and 
Edwards  A.  Park,  and  Horace  Bushnell, 
and  Albert  Barnes  were  all  equally  known 
as  reformers  in  the  moral  life  and  in  theo- 
logical philosophy. 

This  rapid  historical  survey  seemed  to  be 
necessary  to  make  possible  an  intelligible 
picture  of  the  conditions  of  life  and  thought 
in  1847,  when  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  in  the 
thirty-fourth  year  of  his  age,  preached  his 
first  sermon  in  Brooklyn  in  the  place, 
though  not  in  the  church-building,  where 
we  are  now  gathered. 

The  Old  Puritanism  was  still  dominant. 
Whether   we    measure    force   by    numbers, 
wealth,  or  social  eminence,  we  must  accord 
to  the  Old  Puritanism  the  first  place.     Still, 
Lyman    Beecher,    Dr.    Finney,    Dr.    Bush- 
nell,  Mr.   Barnes  and  Professor  Park  were 
making  the  churches  familiar  with  the  then 
new  but  now  axiomatic  doctrine  that  man 
is  free,  that  religion  is  natural  to  him,  and 
that  all   virtue   is   acceptable    and  all    vice 
blamable    in    regenerate    and    unregenerate 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM,  49 

alike.  The  Mexican  War  was  drawing  to  its 
close;  the  cannon  thundering  on  Mexican 
plains  was  awaking  the  sluggish  conscience 
of  New  England  to  a  sense  of  its  participa- 
tion in  and  responsibility  for  slavery. 
Theodore  Parker  had  just  begun  his  cam- 
paign against  it  in  Boston.  Garrison  was  at 
once  provoking  by  his  unwisdom  and  over- 
coming by  his  courage  the  prejudices  and 
the  passions  of  conservative  New  England. 
John  G.  Whittier  was  writing  now  editorials, 
now  poems,  to  awaken  the  nation,  and  earn- 
ing the  title  given  to  him  by  an  admirer,  of 
the  best  lobbyist  in  the  country,  by  his 
indefatigable  and  unofficial  labors  with  timid 
politicians  and  halting  legislators.  Mobs 
were  trying  in  vain,  in  obedience  to  the 
demands  of  slavery,  to  put  a  stop  to  free 
speech  in  the  North,  as  they  had  already 
put  a  stop  to  it  in  the  South,  where  free 
speech,  free  press,  free  schools,  and  free 
labor  were  catalogued  together  in  a  common 
denunciation.  The  great  Evangelical  So- 
cieties— preeminently  the  American  Board 


50  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

and  the  American  Tract  Society  —  were 
silent  before  slavery,  if  not  acquiescent  in 
it,  because  all  Evangelical  Christians  did  not 
agree  in  condemning  it.  The  American 
Missionary  Association  had  just  been  organ- 
ized in  Albany  on  a  platform  of  freedom  to 
speak  the  truth  and  the  whole  truth  in 
preaching  the  Gospel. 

The  first  sermon  of  the  young  preacher 
was  published  in  full  in  the  New  York 
Tribune, — a  more  rare  compliment  in  those 
days  than  in  ours.  It  was  on  the  text 
*'  Every  man  shall  give  account  of  himself 
unto  God."  In  the  sermon  as  read  to-day 
there  is  nothing  extraordinary  except  its 
cumulative  proofs  from  life  in  support  of  the 
text.  But  in  its  recognition  of  human 
liberty  and  human  responsibility  it  at  once 
identified  the  young  preacher  as  belonging 
theologically  to  the  New  Puritanism.  His 
second  notable  sermon  was  the  fourth  one 
preached  in  Brooklyn,  on  the  evening  of 
October  lo,  the  first  Sunday  after  his 
coming  to  the  church.    It  was  a  call  to  arms 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  5^ 

against  intemperance  and  slavery,  especially 
the  latter.      It  identified  him,  not  only  with 
the   New  Puritanism,  but  with   the  radical 
wing  of  the  New  Puritanism,   for  in  it  he 
identified  social  morality  with  personal  and 
spiritual  religion.     The  church  was  organ- 
ized  with  but  twenty-one  members.     But  it 
rapidly    drew    to    itself    men    and   women 
attracted  by  the  courage  even  more  than  by 
the  eloquence  of  the  preacher,  sharing  his 
convictions  and  eager  to  share  in  his  work. 
So  rapid  and  so  substantial  was  the  growth 
of  the  church  that  when,  a  little  over  two 
years  later  (January  13,  1849)^  the  building 
was  destroyed  by  fire,  the  church  was  strong 
enough  in  both  courage  and  money  to  buy 
additional    land,    in    order   to    enlarge   its 
accommodations  and  erect  the  structure  in 
which  it  has  ever    since  worshiped.     It  is 
not   my   purpose  to   trace    the   subsequent 
history    of    Mr.    Beecher   or   of    Plymouth 
Church.     This  has  been  often  done  and  is 
in  print,  easily  accessible  to  any  reader.     I 
propose    on   this    background    of    history, 


52  THE  NEW  PURITANISM, 

rapidly  and  imperfectly  etched,   to    try  to 

tell  you  for  what,   during  forty  years,  the 

church  and  its  pastor  stood,  and  for  what 

the  church  and  its  present  pastor  still  stand. 

In  the  first  place,  Mr.  Beecher,  from  the 

very  beginning,  was  a  preacher  of   Christ, 

and    this    church    has  been   from  the   very 

beginning  a    Christian  church.     There   are 

two  ways  in  which  men  may  come  to  Christ: 

one   through  acquaintance  with    him    as   a 

man- — as  Peter  and  James  and  John  came; 

and  the  other  through  a  vision  of  him  as  a 

God — as  Paul  came.     Henry  Ward  Beecher 

came  to  Jesus  Christ  through  a  vision  of  him 

as  God.     Let  me  read  his  account  of   his 

experience: 

"  I  was  a  child  of  teaching  and  prayer;  I  was 
reared  in  the  household  of  faith;  I  knew  the 
Catechism  as  it  was  taught;  I  was  instructed  in 
the  Scriptures  as  they  were  expounded  from  the 
pulpit,  and  read  by  men  :  and  yet,  till  after  I 
was  twenty-one  years  old,  I  groped  without  the 
knowledge  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus,  I  know  not 
what  the  tablets  of  eternity  have  written  down, 
but  I  think  that  when  I  stand  in  Zion  and  before 
God,  the  brightest  thing  which  I  shall  look  back 


THE  NEW   PURITANISM.  53 

upon  will  be  that  blessed  morning  of  May  when 
it  pleased  God  to  reveal  to  my  wandering  soul 
the  idea  that  it  was  his  nature  to  love  a  man  in 
his  sins  for  the  sake  of  helping  him  out  of  them; 
that  he  did  not  do  it  out  of    compliment   to 
Christ,  or  to  a  law,  or  a  plan  of  salvation,  but 
from  the  fullness  of  his  great  heart;  that  he  was 
a  Being  not  made  mad  by  sin,  but  sorry;  that  he 
was  not  furious  with  wrath  toward  the  sinner, 
but  pitied  him— in  short,  that  he  felt  toward  me 
as  my  mother  felt  toward  me,  to  whose  eyes  my 
wrong-doing  brought  tears,  who  never  pressed 
me  so  close  to  her  as  when  I  had  done  wrong, 
and  who  would  fain,  with  her  yearning  love,  lift 
me  out  of  trouble.    And  when  I  found  that  Jesus 
Christ  had   such    a  disposition,  and   that  when 
his  disciples  did  wrong,  he    drew    them  closer 
to  him  than  he  did  before  ;  and  when  pride  and 
jealousy,  and  rivalry,  and  all  vulgar  and  worldly 
feelings  rankled  in  their  bosoms,  he  opened  his 
heart  to  them  as  a  medicine  to  heal  these  infirmi- 
ties;— when  I  found  that  it  was  Christ's  nature 
to  *lift  men  out  of  weakness  to  strength,  out  of 
impurity  to  goodness,  out  of  everything  low  and 
debasing  to  superiority,  I  felt  that  I  had  found  a 
God. 

"  I  shall  never  forget  the  feelings  with  which 
I  walked  forth  that  May  morning.  The  golden 
pavements  will  never  feel  to  my  feet  as  then  the 
grass  felt  to  them;  and  the  singing  of  the  birds 
in  the  woods — for  I  roamed  in  the  woods — was 


54  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

cacophonous  to  the  sweet  music  of  my  thoughts, 
and  there  were  no  forms  in  the  universe  which 
seemed  to  me  graceful  enough  to  represent  the 
Being  the  conception  of  whose  character  had 
just  dawned  upon  my  mind.  I  felt,  when  I  had, 
with  the  Psalmist,  called  upon  the  heavens,  the 
earth,  the  mountains,  the  streams,  the  floods,  the 
birds,  the  beasts,  and  universal  being,  to  praise 
God,  that  I  had  called  upon  nothing  that  could 
praise  him  enough  for  the  revelation  of  such  a 
nature  as  that  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

Our  knowledge  comes  from  our  experi- 
ence. Calvin,  as  a  student  in  Paris,  was 
called  the  Accuser,  because  he  was  so  rig- 
orous in  his  conscience  against  himself  and 
against  every  one  else.  Luther  found  his 
message  when  it  was  whispered  to  his  own 
heart,  The  just  shall  live  by  faith;  and  in 
it  he  found  peace.  And  when  the  message 
of  God  in  Christ  was  proclaimed  to  Mr. 
Beecher's  heart,  the  message  was  given  to 
him  which  all  the  rest  of  his  life  he  pro- 
claimed. He  was  not  primarily  a  preacher 
of  righteousness,  not  primarily  an  anti- 
slavery  preacher,  not  primarily  a  preacher 
of  law  or  doctrine  or  theology  of  any  kind; 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  55 

he  was  primarily  a  preacher  of  Christ.  The 
one  great  book  of  his  life,  written  as  a  book, 
not  composed  of  spoken  words  reported, 
was  the  Life  of  Jesus,  the  Christ ;  and  when 
that  Life  was  left  unfinished,  because  his 
life  had  been  broken  in  upon,  and  his  sons 
undertook  to  finish  it  for  him,  they  found 
in  his  sermons  enough  of  description  of 
Christ's  life  to  complete  the  work,  with  one 
single  great  exception.  He  had  never  ven- 
tured to  describe  the  passion  and  death  of 
Christ  upon  the  cross,  because  he  could  not 
command  himself  to  do  it. 

At  one  time  Mr.  Beecher  lectured  in  a 
**  Fraternity  Course,"  projected  by  the 
young  men  of  Theodore  Parker's  church  for 
charitable  purposes.  The  Course  included 
Mr.  Parker,  together  with  six  or  eight  of  the 
other  best  known  lyceum  orators  of  that 
day ;  but  men  who  forgot  that  Paul  preached 
to  Jews  and  to  pagans  set  their  batteries 
in  array  against  Henry  Ward  Beecher  for 
lecturing  to  radical  Unitarians.  In  his 
answer  he  said   this  (I   read  it  not  as   an 


56  THE  NEW  PURITANISM, 

accurate  definition  of  his  theology,  I  do  not 
think  it  is,  but  as  an  exposition  of  his  own 
personal  experience):  ''Men  at  large  will 
be  apt  to  say  that  I  have  done  a  more  ex- 
emplary Christian  act,  in  daring  to  avow  an 
ethical  sympathy  with  Theodore  Parker, 
between  whom  and  myself  there  exists  an 
irreconcilable  theological  difference,  than  if 
I  had  bombarded  him  for  a  whole  year  and 
refused  to  take  his  hand.  .  .  .  Could  Theo- 
dore Parker  worship  my  God  ?  Christ  Jesus 
is  his  name.  All  that  there  is  of  God  to 
me  is  bound  up  in  that  name.  A  dim  and 
shadowy  effluence  rises  from  Christ,  and 
that  I  am  taught  to  call  the  Father.  A 
yet  more  tenuous  and  invisible  film  of 
thought  arises,  and  that  is  the  Holy  Spirit. 
But  neither  is  to  me  aught  tangible,  rest- 
ful, accessible." 

This  Apostolic  conception  of  Christ  as 
the  one  Image  of  the  invisible  God,  to  be 
worshiped  and  glorified,  together  with  the 
Father  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  Mr.  Beecher 
never    lost.     It    was    his    conception,    and 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM,  $7 

underlay  his    religious    life    and   his  pulpit 

teaching,  to  the  end  of  his  life.      In   1886, 

one  year  before  his  death,  this  is  what  he 

said  to  the  ministers  in  London: 

*'  Now,  if  you  ask  me  if  I  believe  in  the  divin- 
ity of  Christ, — I  do  not  believe  in  anything  else. 
Let  a  man  stand  and  look  at  the  sun,  then  ask 
him  what  he  sees  besides.  Nothing;  it  blinds 
him.  There  is  nothing  else  to  me  when  I  am 
thinking  of  God;  it  fills  the  whole  sphere,  the 
heaven  of  heavens,  the  whole  earth  and  all  time; 
and  out  of  that  boundlessness  of  love  and  out  of 
that  infiniteness  of  divine  faculty  and  capacity 
it  seems  to  me  that  he  is,  to  my  thought,  what 
summer  is  when  I  see  it  marching  on  after  the 
cold  winter  is  over.  I  know  where  the  light 
comes  from  and  I  know  where  the  warmth  comes 
from.  When  I  see  anything  going  on  for  good 
and  for  the  staying  of  evil  I  know  it  is  the  Sun 
of  Righteousness,  and  the  name  to  me  is  Jesus — 
every  time  Jesus.  For  him  I  live,  for  him  I  love, 
for  him  I  labor,  for  him  I  rejoice  in  my  remain- 
ing strength,  for  him  I  thank  God  that  I  have 
yet  so  much  in  me  that  can  spend  and  be  spent 
for  the  only  one  great  cause  which  should  lift 
itself  above  every  other  cause  in  this  whole 
world." 

You  will  bear  me  witness  that  I  do  not 
often  speak  of  denominations  by  name,  and 


58  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

it  is  a  habit  of  mine  not  to  use  theological 
terminology,  but  I  confess  it  fills  me  with 
wonder  that  Mr.  Beecher  should  ever  have 
been  regarded  as  a  Unitarian,  or  this  church 
should  ever  have  been  looked  at  as  in  any 
sense  a  Unitarian  church,  or,  if  I  may  be 
allowed  to  say  so,  that  its  present  pastor 
should  ever  have  been  thought  to  be  Uni- 
tarian in  his  tendency.  That  there  are 
certain  great  truths  which  Channing  pro- 
claimed, and  which  Mr.  Beecher  held,  I  do 
perfectly  believe;  and  I  am  glad  to  take 
truth  wherever  I  can  find  it.  If  I  can  find 
it  in  a  Roman  Catholic  bishop,  in  a  Uni- 
tarian teacher,  in  a  Friends'  conventicle — 
wherever  I  can  find  truth,  I  will  take  it. 
But  the  heart  of  Mr.  Beecher's  teaching  was 
this:  that  Jesus  Christ  was  God  manifest 
in  the  flesh.  The  center  that  holds  this 
church  together  is  its  faith  in  Jesus  Christ 
and  its  loyalty  to  him.  And  what  Mr. 
Beecher  held  and  this  church  holds  on  this 
subject,  I  hold  no  less  earnestly.  We  do 
not  ask  what  men  believe  on  other  things, 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  59 

what  they  think  about  decrees  or  fore- 
ordination.  I  think  we  would  even  let  a 
man  join  us  who  believes  in  limited  atone- 
ment and  special  election;  he  might  be  as 
heretical  as  the  old-time  Puritans,  and  we 
would  not  close  the  door  on  him.  The  one 
thing  we  demand  is  loyalty  to  Jesus  Christ. 
Some  of  us  believe  in  infant  baptism,  and 
some  do  not ;  some  believe  in  universal  sal- 
vation, some  in  conditional  immortality,  and 
some  in  endless  punishment;  some  are 
liberal  and  progressive,  and  some  are  con- 
servative: we  do  not  ask  what  they  think  on 
these  questions.  The  one  thing  that  holds 
us  together  is  this:  we  all  love  Christ  as 
our  Saviour;  we  all  acknowledge  him  as  our 
Master;  we  all  follow  him  as  our  Leader; 
we  all  bow  down  to  him  with  absolute 
allegiance  as  our  Lord.  I  will  exercise  my 
own  rational  judgment  in  determining  what 
he  said ;  I  will  exercise  it  on  the  Gospels  as 
freely  as  I  exercise  it  anywhere  else ;  for  God 
gave  us  our  reason  to  use.  But  when  I  have 
found  out  what  Christ  teaches,  that  is  final, 


6o  THE  NEW  PURITANISM, 

that  to  me  is  truth:  and  when  I  find  out 
what  Christ  commands,  that  is  final,  that 
to  me  is  law:  and  when  I  find  out  where 
Christ  leads,  that  is  final;  that  is  where  I 
mean  to  follow,  God  helping  me.  First  of 
all,  the  foundation  of  all,  the  most  import- 
ant of  all,  this  church  is  in  its  very  heart,  as 
Mr.  Beecher  was  in  his  heart,  and  as  I  hope 
before  God  I  am  in  my  heart,  a  loyal  sub- 
ject of  Jesus  Christ. 

Rooted  in  this  faith  in  Christ  was  that 
great  faith  of  his,  of  which  he  was  preemi- 
nently a  herald — God  is  love.  If  I  might 
specify  the  three  characteristics  of  what  I 
call  the  New  Puritanism,  they  would  be 
these:  first,  man  is  free;  secondly,  in  all 
sane  men  is  the  light  that  lighteth  every 
man  that  cometh  into  the  world;  thirdly, 
God  is  love.  Finney  was  the  exponent 
of  the  first:  his  message  was  the  law  of 
liberty.  Bushnell  was  the  exponent  of 
the  second:  his  message  was  that  in  the 
light  within  men  is  the  life  of  men.  Mr. 
Peeqher  was  the  exponent  of  the  third :  God 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM,  t)I 

is  love.  Because  he  believed  that  God  is 
love,  he  believed  in  an  emotional  and  an 
enthusiastic  religion.  One  of  his  earliest 
sermons  was  a  plea  for  enthusiasm;  and  in 
that  time  the  church  did  not  believe  in 
enthusiasm.  The  measures  which  Dr.  Kirk 
was  using  in  Albany,  which  Dr.  Finney  was 
using  all  over  the  country,  which  Dr. 
Lyman  Beecher  had  used  in  the  West,  were 
called  new  measures.  To  ask  a  man  to  rise 
in  church  for  prayer,  to  ask  him  to  acknowl- 
edge Christ  before  men,  to  ask  him  then 
and  there  to  give  his  heart  to  God, — these 
were  new  measures.  Mr.  Beecher  believed 
in  them,  and  used  them.  He  believed  in 
revivals  of  religion  and  labored  in  them. 
This  church  believed  in  revivals  of  religion ; 
I  hope  it  believes  in  such  revivals  of  religion 
now.  It  was  born  in  a  revival ;  it  has  been 
nurtured  in  revivals;  it  has  carried  the 
spirit  of  revival  with  it  ever  since.  It  is 
true,  the  methods  and  the  measures  have 
changed ;  but  it  is  not  true  that  the  spirit 
has  changed. 


62  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

And  because  Mr.  Beecher  believed  and 
because  we  believe  in  love  as  the  heart  of 
God,  therefore  he  believed  and  we  believe 
in  a  natural  religion — for  is  it  not  natural 
for  people  to  love  ?  Is  the  mother  who 
does  not  care  for  her  child  a  natural 
mother  or  an  unnatural  mother  ?  Is  the 
man  who  does  not  care  for  his  country  a 
natural  man  or  an  unnatural  man  ?  Is  the 
friend  who  feels  no  friendship  for  the  com- 
panion at  his  side  a  natural  man  or  an 
unnatural  man  ?  If  religion  is  love,  then 
religion  is  natural.  We  are  accused  of 
decrying  supernatural  religion.  If  by  that 
is  meant  that  we  affirm  that  religion,  in  the 
heart  and  essence  of  it  and  in  all  the  phases 
of  it,  is  most  natural,  then  I  plead  guilty  to 
the  charge.  We  believe  that  religion  is  the 
natural  life  of  a  right  soul,  and  that  to  live 
apart  from  God  is  against  nature,  contrary 
to  nature,  unnatural.  And  so  we  believe, 
and  he  believed,  in  a  rational  religion — in 
the  application  of  the  whole  man  to  religion, 
and  the  use  of  the  whole  man  in  the  relig- 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM,  63 

ious  life.  We  believe  that  religion  does  not 
stifle  the  reason  and  bid  men  refuse  to  use 
it;  we  believe  that  religion  incites  men  to  a 
larger  and  freer  use  of  the  reason.  The 
Christian  minister  should  be  the  freest  of  all 
free-thinkers. 

For  the  same  reason  we  believe  in  a  vital 
religion,  a  religion  of  the  common  life. 
The  old  definition  between  the  secular  and 
the  religious  we  repudiate.  I  learned  this 
lesson  in  my  youth,  in  Plymouth  Church. 
I  was  getting  up  a  concert  for  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association;  it  was  to  be 
held  here  in  Plymouth  Church;  I  wrote 
out  a  notice  for  Mr.  Beecher  to  read: 
**  There  will  be,"  said  the  notice,  *'some 
secular  music  and  some  sacred  music." 
He  read  it,  and  then  commented  thus: 
*'  All  good  music  is  sacred,  and  all  bad 
music  is  execrably  secular. '  *  Religion  might 
be  not  inaptly  defined,  the  art  of  living.  I 
will  not  say  right  living,  because  no  living 
is  living  that  is  not  right  living.  Wrong 
living  is  death,  not  life.     Religion  is  the  life 


64  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

of  the  conscience,  of  the  faith,  of  the  hope, 
of  the  love,  of  the  reverence;  it  is  the  life 
of  the  eyes,  of  the  fingers,  of  the  feet,  of  the 
whole  man.  It  is  to  be  carried  out  in  the 
factory,  in  the  store,  in  the  office,  in  society, 
in  the  home,  in  all  the  places  of  life, — 
and  therefore  in  the  intellect.  The  notion 
that  there  are  two  departments  of  man,  one 
religious  and  the  other  secular,  that  the 
goats  live  in  the  secular  and  the  sheep  live 
in  the  religious,  is  all  based  on  a  misinter- 
pretation of  one  of  Paul's  declarations — 
"  The  natural  man  receiveth  not  the  things 
of  the  spirit  of  God ;  .  .  .  neither  can  he 
know  them."  What  he  means  is  this:  The 
''natural  man  " — that  is,  the  mere  ani- 
mal man — cannot  understand  the  super- 
natural, supersensuous  world.  To  under- 
stand that  world  we  must  rise  above  the 
animal  condition  and  enter  into  a  higher 
realm,  the  spiritual.  But  that  realm  is  open 
to  every  man.  Whosoever  will,  may  take 
of  the  water  of  life  freely. 

I  wish  I  could  make  you  see  how  natural 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  65 

a  thing  it  is  to  love  God  as  God  loves  you, 
and  how  unnatural  a  thing  it  is  not  to  do  it; 
how  natural  a  thing  it  is  to  pray,  giving 
thanks  for  his  goodness,  and  how  unnatural 
a  thing  it  is  to  live  with  closed  lips;  how 
natural  a  thing  it  is  to  take  the  inspiration 
of  his  love  and  carry  it  out  in  daily  life  and 
service  to  others,  and  how  unnatural  a  thing 
it  is  to  live  a  selfish,  worldly,  mean,  and 
despicable  life.  There  is  not  one  of  you 
who  has  not  wings,  and  the  air  is  all  about 
you.  You  cannot  fly  without  air;  no!  But 
God  has  surrounded  the  world  with  air, 
and  he  has  given  you  the  wings — now  rise 
and  fly.  Do  not  be  a  grub;  that  is  the 
unnatural  thing. 

And  because  God  is  love,  and  religion  is 
love,  and  life  is  love,  and  love  is  natural  to 
man,  religion  is  to  be  seen  in  carrying  love 
out  in  daily  conduct.  There  is  no  religion 
which  is  not  ethical.  There  is  no  religion  in 
the  emotions  excited  and  life  left  impover- 
ished. There  is  no  religion  in  ecstatic 
prayers  and   mean  and   niggardly  living, — 


66  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

to  quote  Mr.  Beecher  again,  *'  We  cannot 
pray  cream  and  live  skim-milk. ' '     From  the 
first  that  has  been  the  message  of  this  pul- 
pit.    Because  we    have  loved    Christ,   and 
because  we  have  loved  the  God  whom  Christ 
has    revealed   to  us,   and  because  we  have 
loved  our  fellow  men  in  that  they  are  God's 
children  and  are  revealed  to  us  in  Christ, 
therefore  have  we  stood  against  whatever 
dwarfs  and  diminishes  and  belittles  human- 
ity, therefore  have  we  stood  for  whatever 
ennobles,   enfranchises,   and  lifts  humanity 
up.     Would    that    you    younger  men    and 
women   could    see    in  what    condition   was 
society    in   America   when    the    American 
Tract  Society  and  the  American  Board  and 
the    American    Home    Missionary    Society 
were  all  silent  on  the  subject  of   slavery, 
because  all  Evangelical  Christians  were  not 
agreed  upon  the  subject  of  slavery;  when 
the  great  Methodist  Church  and  the  great 
Presbyterian  Church  were  divided,   one  of 
them  almost  wholly,  and  the  other  partly, 
on   the   question   of  slavery;    what    it   was 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  6/ 

when,  if  a  man  spoke  for  freedom  in  New 
York  or  Philadelphia  or  Boston,  he  did  so 
at  the  hazard  of  violence  from  a  mob,  and 
perhaps  at  the  hazard  of  his  life ,  what  it 
was  when  men  were  vilifying  Sumner  and 
Chase  and  Garrison  and  Phillips,  and  even 
John  G.  Whittier,  because  they  had  raised 
a  voice  for  the  freedom  of  the  slave ;  what 
it  was,  in  a  new  church  enterprise  in  this 
great  commercial  metropolis,  to  proclaim 
liberty  unto  all  God's  children;  and  then 
what  it  was  for  the  merchants,  the  lawyers, 
the  business  men,  whose  business  prosperity 
apparently  depended  on  silent  lips,  to  rally 
around  that  new  herald  and  say.  Go  on, 
speak  for  us,  and  we  will  stand  by  you! 
It  is  easy  now.  It  does  not  now  require 
bravery  to  be  brave  in  Plymouth  pulpit. 
He  who  stands  here  can  speak  on  the  labor 
question,  on  Biblical  criticism,  on  theolog- 
ical and  ethical  problems,  on  any  phase 
of  any  theological  or  ethical  problem,  and 
the  church,  whether  it  agrees  with  him  or 
not,  will  say.  Speak,  if  you  speak  your  own 


68  THE  NEW  PURITANISM, 

convictions.  The  one  thing  this  church 
would  not  endure  would  be  this:  that  its 
minister  should  be  afraid  to  say  what  he 
thought  was  the  truth.  It  does  not  take 
courage  to  speak  freely  on  this  platform. 
A  man  would  have  to  be  a  hero  in  cowardice 
to  be  a  coward  here. 

I  have  tried  to  indicate  the  features  of 
the  Old  Puritanism — a  fatalistic  system,  with 
God  as  sovereign  Judge;  and  the  features 
of  the  New  Puritanism — man  a  free  moral 
agent,  with  God  the  all-loving  Father:  and 
now  I  put  them  side  by  side  and  ask  you 
not  only  to  judge  them  as  they  look,  but  to 
judge  them  by  their  fruits.     We  have  had 
the  experience  of  something  like  one  hun- 
dred years  of  the  New  Puritanism,  begin- 
ning in  1800,  growing  stronger  and  stronger, 
until  it  came  to  its  flower  about  the  mid- 
dle of  this  century;    and  what  is  the  frui- 
tion ?     Intemperance  still  exists.     Yes,  but 
not  in  the  church   of  Christ.      We  are  not 
all    total    abstainers,    and    we    are    not    all 
of  us  prohibitionists;  but  the  church  does 


THE  NEW   PURITANISM.  69 

stand  for  self-control,  and  against  the  traffic 
that  makes  money  out  of  the  death  of  men. 
We  have  seen  slavery  abolished  and  every 
chain  broken,  and  the  men  who  broke  the 
chains — I    repeat    it — were    the   same  men 
who  were  preaching    the  New  Puritanism. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  single  aboli- 
tionist   belonging    to   the   Old    Puritanism. 
We  have  seen  foreign  and  home  missions 
both  born.     Then,  not  a  church  with  a  mis- 
sion chapel — now,  no  church  of  size  in  any 
of  our  cities  without  one;  then,  no  foreign 
missionary  organization,  no  home  missionary 
organization  —  now,    a    foreign     missionary 
organization    carrying   the    gospel    to    the 
heathen,  and  a  home  missionary  organiza- 
tion  building  up   the   waste   places  of  our 
own  country,  and  the  American  Missionary 
Association   working   among   the  poor  and 
the  outcast,  where  no  man  was  allowed  to 
work    in    1850.      And    all    this    having    its 
fountain  and  its  source  in  spiritual  life. 

I  do  not  know  whether  I  ought  to  speak 
of  this  church  or  not.     God  knows  I  do  not 


fO  THE  NEW  PURITANISM. 

wish  to  praise  or  to  flatter,  certainly  not  to 
apologize  or  excuse;  and  yet,  when  we  are 
told  that  the  New  Puritanism  is  undermin- 
ing life  and  destroying  faith,  I  have  a  right 
to  point  to  the  fifty  years  of  history  of  this 
Christian  church.  Still  it  ministers  every 
Sunday  to  two  essentially  distinct  large  con- 
gregations. Still  its  voice  is  carried  beyond 
its  walls  to  unseen  and  unnumbered  auditors 
beyond.  Still  through  its  ministry  men  and 
women  are  brought  to  confess  their  faith  in 
God  and  in  his  Son  Jesus  Christ.  In  fifty 
years,  three  thousand  six  hundred  and 
thirty-three  have  thus  come  into  the  king- 
dom of  God  through  the  doors  of  this 
church.^  The  love  of  Christ  draws  men 
who  could  not  be  coerced  by  fear.  What 
sort  of  Christians  does  the  New  Puritanism 
make?  Probably  not  unlike  other  Christians 
— some  good,  some  indifferent,  some  poor. 
Yet  in  answer  to  tliat  question  I  may  point 


'  An  average  of  a  little  over  seventy-two  a  year. 
During  the  ten  years  since  Mr.  Beecher's  death,  six 
hundred  have  joined  the  church,  an  average  of  sixty  a 
year,  without  special  measuresormeetingsof  any  kind. 


THE  NEW  PURITANISM.  'J\ 

to  the  fact  that  in  our  three  Sunday-schools 
are  gathered  every  Sunday  an  average  of 
over  twelve  hundred,  studying  the  Bible; 
that  we  do  not  lack  faithful  teachers,  that 
on  this  fiftieth  anniversary-day  every  class 
is  supplied,  and  we  have  a  waiting-list  of 
volunteers  to  call  from  in  the  future ;  that 
Plymouth  Church  is  a  week-day  as  well  as 
a  Sunday  church;  that  with  its  two  Kin- 
dergartens, its  two  Sewing-schools,  its  two 
Societies  of  Christian  Endeavor,  its  three 
Boys'  Clubs,  its  Boys*  Brigade,  its  Mothers' 
Meetings,  and  its  Missionary  Societies, 
there  is  rarely  an  evening  in  the  week  in 
which  there  are  not  going  on  contem- 
poraneously two  or  more  meetings  for  the 
service  of  God  in  and  through  the  service 
of  humanity ;  and  that  an  average  of  ten  to 
twelve  thousand  dollars  is  given  annually, 
all  of  it  spontaneously,  most  of  it  in  modest 
contributions — aside  from  the  expenses  of 
the  church  itself — for  the  support  of  this 
work  of  Christ  by  Christ's  disciples  in  this 
church  of  Christ. 


72  THE  NEW  PURITANISM, 

The  church  has  had  its  trials.  Its  home 
burnt  down,  that  is  built  again ;  attacked  and 
vilified  in  the  person  of  its  pastor  for  his 
heresies  and  erraticisms,  it  has  maintained 
itself  unscathed ;  assaulted  in  the  very  cita- 
del of  its  life,  the  only  effect  has  been  to 
rally  its  members  around  about  its  leader  and 
make  it  more  united  and  more  stalwart  than 
before.  Suddenly  in  the  midst  of  the  battle 
the  flag  is  seen  to  waver  and  the  flag-bearer 
falls  in  death ;  but  the  church  halts  only  for 
a  moment,  then  gathers  around  that  flag 
stronger  than  ever,  better  organized,  to  go 
on  following  another  standard-bearer.  For 
it  has  not  been  the  flag-bearer,  it  has  been 
the  flag,  and  yet  more  the  Christ  whom 
that  flag  means,  that  has  held  this  church 
together,  and  will  hold  it  together  so  long 
as  God  has  work  for  it  to  do.  And,  please 
God,  with  our  face  to  the  future,  fol- 
lowing him,  we  will  go  on,  preaching  the 
freedom  of  man's  will,  preaching  the  re- 
ligion of  righteousness  and  practical  love, 
preaching  the  Christ  of  God  as  the  revela- 


THE   NEW  PURIl^ANISM.  73 

tion  of  his  infinite  and  all-saving  mercy,  not 
fearing  lest  we  go  too  far,  for  we  have  not 
yet  overtaken  Christ,  not  fearing  lest  we  be 
led  astray, — no  fear  of  that  so  long  as  we 
follow  where  he  leads  the  way: — first,  last, 
and  all  the  time,  a  church  of  Jesus  Christ. 


Ipurttan   principles  anb   tbe  /iDobern 

MorlO, 

AMORY  H.  BRADFORD. 


II. 


puritan  iPrtnctples  auD  tbe  /iDobern 

Morlt)/ 

By  AMORY  H.  BRADFORD,  D.D., 
Of  First  Congregational  Church,  Montclair,  N.  J. 

**  I  proclaimed  a  fast  there  at  the  river  Ahava, 
that  we  might  afflict  ourselves  before  our  God  to 
seek  of  him  the  right  way." — Ezra^  viii.  21. 

The  sleepy  river  flows  as  slowly  by  Delfs- 
haven  to-day  as  when  two  hundred  and 
seventy-seven  years  ago  a  little  company  of 
English  Christians  embarked  on  its  waters, 
for  the  most  memorable  voyage  ever  sailed 
on  any  sea. 

The  precise  point  of  their  departure  can- 
not be  identified.  The  river  is  lined  with 
warehouses  and  factories,  and  neither  tradi- 


*  Plymouth  Church,  Sunday  evening,  May  17,  1897. 

77 


78  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

tion  nor  history  speaks  of  the  exact  spot 
where  the  Speedwell  was  anchored.  But 
some  things  which  preceded  the  embarka- 
tion are  known,  and  among  them  that  a  day 
of  fasting  and  prayer  was  observed,  when 
John  Robinson,  with  the  inspiration  of  a 
prophet  and  the  tenderness  of  a  pastor, 
preached  from  the  text  which  has  been 
chosen  for  our  text  to-day.  The  solemnity 
of  the  occasion  cannot  be  reproduced.  It 
was  one  of  those  historic  moments  when 
men  chosen  of  God  dimly  realize  that  they 
are  facing  a  mission  of  vast  and  mysterious 
magnitude,  and  therefore  humble  them- 
selves before  Almighty  God  and  seek  to 
know  his  will.  At  least  one  sentence  in 
that  sermon  has  become  immortal.  Indeed 
it  may  be  questioned  if  any  other  senti- 
ment ever  spoken  by  any  English  preacher 
is  so  vividly  remembered  or  will  live  so 
long.  Edward  Winslow,  writing  twenty 
years  after,  in  speaking  of  Robinson  and  his 
sermon,  says:  **  Amongst  other  wholesome 
instructions  and  exhortations  he  used  these 


AND    THE  MODERN    WORLD.  79 

expressions,  or  to  the  same  purpose."  (I 
quote  but  one:)  **And  if  God  should  reveal 
anything  to  us  by  any  other  instrument  of 
his,  to  be  as  ready  to  receive  it  as  ever  we 
were  to  receive  any  truth  by  his  ministry. 
For  he  was  very  confident  the  Lord  had 
more  truth  and  light  yet  to  break  forth  out 
of  his  holy  Word." 

The  Pilgrim  Fathers  were  all  Puritans, 
and  yet  they  were  not  bigots.  Their  eyes 
were  open  toward  the  future,  but  they  did 
not  forget  the  truths  which  had  been  forged 
in  the  fires  of  the  Reformation.  The  ser- 
mon of  John  Robinson  on  that  memorable 
day  was  an  eloquent  and  solemn  presenta- 
tion of  the  principles  of  Puritanism ;  the 
principles  which  in  England  led  to  Hamp- 
den, Harry  Vane,  Cromwell,  the  Puritan 
Revolution;  the  principles  which  inspired 
the  heroic  souls  who  dared  a  winter  voyage 
on  the  North  Atlantic  in  a  craft  smaller 
than  ocean  yachts  to-day;  which  led  to  the 
compact  in  the  cabin  of  the  Mayflower ^  to 
the    Declaration    of   Independence,   to  the 


80  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

Union  of  States,  and  to  all  that  distin- 
guishes what  is  best  in  American  civilization. 
Therefore  it  has  seemed  as  if  this  sermon 
and  this  text  were  the  proper  starting-point 
for  a  consideration  of  the  *'  Relation  of 
Puritan  Principles  to  the  Modern  World." 

No  people  can  ever  safely  forget  or  neg- 
lect the  source  of  their  loftiest  inspirations. 
We  shall  appreciate  our  destiny  only  as  we 
first  appreciate  our  beginnings.  The  roots 
of  the  American  Republic  are  bedded  deeply 
in  the  soil  of  Puritanism.  Were  some  of 
our  ancestors  Scotch  ?  They  were  Scotch 
Puritans.  Were  others  Dutch?  They  came 
here  with  the  principles  which  so  powerfully 
influenced  the  Pilgrims  in  Holland.  Were 
still  others  English?  In  so  far  as  their  work 
was  vital  and  enduring  they  were  men  of 
the  same  spirit  and  temper  as  those  who  a 
little  later  in  England  fought  at  Marston 
Moor  and  Naseby,  Worcester  and  Dunbar. 
Others  may  sneer  at  Puritanism,  but  for  an 
American  to  do  so  is  like  a  son  desecrating 
the  home  in  which  he  was  born  and   the 


AND    THE   MODERN    WORLD.  8 1 

memory  of  the   parents  by  whom  he  was 

trained. 

What  were  the  distinctive  Principles  of 
Ptiritanism  ?     They  were  the  following: 

Every  individual  has  immediate  access  to 
God,  and  in  all  the  affairs  of  the  spirit  is 
responsible  to  him  alone. 

As  men  are  responsible  to  God  alone,  all 
are  under  a  sacred  obligation  to  insist  on 
the  right  and  duty  of  absolute  mental  free- 
dom, unhindered  by  dictation  from  any 
human  authority. 

The  true  church  of  Christ  is  composed  of 
all  regenerate  persons,  and  all  are  to  be 
regarded  as  regenerate  who  prove  their 
faith  by  holy  character. 

As  a  later  though  perfectly  logical  and 
necessary  result  of  what  precedes:  all  be- 
lievers have  equal  rights  before  God,  and 
when  they  act  together  the  body  of  believers 
may  be  trusted. 

These  principles  may  seem  somewhat 
abstract  and  academic,  but  they  made  the 
Puritan  Revolution  in  Great  Britain  a  neces- 


82  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

sity  and  the  American  Republic  a  possi- 
bility. Locked  in  their  somewhat  rough 
exterior  is  the  life  which  thrills  in  modern 
liberty,  and  they  suggest  with  clearness  the 
social  state  which  will  prevail  when  the 
noblest  religious,  social,  and  political  ideals 
have  had  time  to  work  to  their  legitimate 
ends. 

What  was  the  Genesis  of  Puritanism  ? 

It  is  difficult  to  find  the  source  of  any 
river.  Rivulets  run  to  a  thousand  valleys, 
and  the  spring  in  which  the  most  remote 
seems  to  have  its  birth  may  have  unseen 
streams  reaching  to  far-distant  fountains. 
The  source  of  every  river  is  in  the  clouds; 
their  source  is  the  ocean,  and  the  ocean  is  a 
fountain  because  of  the  attraction  of  the 
sun.  There  have  been  Puritans  in  all  ages 
and  among  all  religions.  Moses  was  a 
Puritan;  so  were  the  prophets;  so  were  the 
apostles;  so  were  Augustine  and  Marsiglio, 
so  were  Luther  and  Calvin.  The  Puritans 
have  always  been  those  who  have  insisted 


AND    THE   MODERN    WORLD.  83 

that  spirit  is  more  than  form,  and  that 
character  is  more  than  ceremony.  The 
noblest  utterance  of  Hebrew  Puritanism 
was  this:  '*  What  doth  the  Lord  require  of 
thee,  but  to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy,  and 
to  walk  humbly  before  thy  God?  '* 

Historically,    Puritanism    as   we    under- 
stand  it   began   soon   after  the  Church  in 
England  under  Henry  the  Eighth  was  sep- 
arated  from   the   Church    in    Rome.      The 
cause    of    that  separation   was  vicious.     A 
lecherous  king  wished  freedom  from  Papal 
dictation  in  order  that  he  might  be  divorced 
and  thus  be  able  lawfully  to  marry  again. 
After  the  division  the  Church  of  England 
remained  the  same  as  before,   except  that 
the   King  was   in   the  place   of  the   Pope. 
The  separation  was  called   a   reformation. 
From  the  beginning,  however,  men  of  lofty 
character  insisted  that  it  had  not  gone  far 
enough ;  that  the  Church  should  not  only  be 
separated  from  Papal  dictation,  but  from  all 
those  tenets  and  practices  which  were  hos- 
tile to  righteousness.     From  that  time  there 


§4  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

were  Puritans  in  name  as  well  as  in  fact, 
and  they  were  a  constantly  growing  force  in 
the  ecclesiastical  and  political  life  of  Great 
Britain.  They  insisted  on  purity  of  charac- 
ter as  essential  to  service  in  Church  and 
State.  All  were  not  Separatists  then,  as 
they  are  not  now.  There  are  Puritans  in  the 
Church  of  England  to-day,  as  there  were 
then.  The  Presbyterians  of  Scotland  were 
as  distinctly  Puritans  as  the  Separatists  of 
England.  Puritanism  was  a  spirit  which 
manifested  itself  in  many  forms.  When 
the  Separatists  under  Cromwell  defeated 
the  Presbyterians  under  Lesly  at  Dunbar, 
the  fight  was  between  the  Puritan  who 
believed  in  a  State  Church  and  the  Puritan 
who  believed  that  union  of  Church  and 
State  was  a  device  of  the  devil.  Puritan 
principles  are  not  limited  to  any  ecclesiasti- 
cal organizations.  They  came  to  this  coun- 
try with  the  Scotch-Irish,  with  the  Pilgrims 
of  Plymouth,  and  the  Puritans  of  Massa- 
chusetts Bay.  They  are  making  themselves 
felt   now  as  clearly  as  two    centuries  ago. 


AND    THE  MODERN    WORLD.  85 

The  Nonconformist  Conscience  in  England 
is  a  new  manifestation  of  Puritanism ;  the 
municipal  revival  in  the  United  States  is 
another.  Both  are  the  insistence  that  the 
offices  of  the  State  are  as  holy  as  those  of 
the  Church,  and  that  no  man  ought  to 
represent  the  State  in  any  official  position 
who  is  not  pure  in  his  character  and  unsel- 
fish in  his  aspirations  and  methods. 

From  the  first,  Puritanism  has  been  dis- 
tinctly a  religious  movement,  but  it  quickly 
ceased  to  be  ecclesiastical.  It  is  as  religious 
to-day  as  when  the  Pilgrims  sailed  or  Crom- 
well fought  or  Milton  sang;  and  it  is  relig- 
ious now,  as  then,  because  a  true  view  of 
religion  embraces  all  which  concerns  the 
welfare  of  man  both  in  time  and  eternity. 
Puritanism  stands  for  reality;  for  character; 
for  clean  living  as  a  condition  of  public  ser- 
vice; for  recognition  of  responsibility  to 
God  ;  for  the  supremacy  of  the  spirit.  When 
Oliver  Cromwell  entered  Parliament  in  1653, 
and  said,  pointing  to  one  member,  ''There 
3its  a  taker  of  bribes;"  to  another,  ''There 


86  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

sits  a  man  whose  religion  is  a  farce;'*  to 
another,  using  the  hardest  name  possible, 
which  I  soften,  **  There  sits  a  man  whose 
personal  conduct  is  impure  and  foul;"  and 
then  in  the  name  of  Almighty  God  broke 
up  the  Parliament,  he  was  the  impersona- 
tion of  Puritanism ;  and  for  one,  I  wish  he 
would  rise  from  his  grave  and  in  the  same 
spirit  enter  some  of  our  halls  of  legislation, 
both  state  and  national. 

So  much  for  the  genesis  of  Puritanism. 

What   has   been    the   Effect   of  Puritanism 

on  the  World? 

To  ask  that  question  is  to  answer  it.  It 
fought  the  priesthood  in  the  Hebrew  times, 
and  insisted  on  genuineness  and  spirituality. 
It  was  personified  in  John  Calvin  when  he 
wrought  to  perfect  expression  the  truth  that 
every  individual  may  come  into  the  imme- 
diate presence  of  God  and  is  responsible  to 
him  alone.  It'  inspired  the  Puritan  Revolu- 
tion. It  sent  the  Pilgrims  to  Plymouth. 
It    made  this    nation  a  republic,   and    has 


AND    THE  MODERN    WORLD.  87 

dominated  the  whole  British  Empire,  so 
that  the  Union  Jack  stands  for  a  liberty 
quite  as  ample  as  that  represented  by  the 
Stars  and  Stripes. 

At  one  time  Puritanism  seemed  synony- 
mous with  narrow  theology,  bigotry,  witch- 
burning,  sanctimoniousness,  spiritual  des- 
potism. That  was  because  its  principles 
had  not  had  time  to  work  into  life  and 
institutions.  Freedom  of  thought  is  now 
realized  wherever  Puritanism  is  in  control. 
The  fact  that  men  are  responsible  to  God 
alone,  and  therefore  that  no  earthly  sover- 
eign has  any  divine  right,  has  undermined 
or  limited  every  throne  in  Europe.  Puri- 
tanism compelled  the  modern  movement  in 
theology,  and  John  Calvin  and  Jonathan 
Edwards  were  its  greatest  prophets  and 
the  lineal  theological  ancestors  of  Horace 
Bushnell,  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  and  Phillips 
Brooks.  Puritanism  has  always  insisted 
on  a  high  standard  of  character  as  a  pre- 
requisite to  public  service;  that  no  man 
should  be    in   the    Church  whose   life    has 


88  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

not  experienced  a  change  so  vital  as  to  be 
called  a  new  birth;  that  the  State  is  as 
holy  as  the  Church,  and  therefore  that 
those  who  minister  at  its  altars  should  be 
without  taint.  Puritanism  is  a  spirit,  but  a 
spirit  which  has  always  found  expression  in 
men  and  institutions — and  what  men  and 
institutions  have  sprung  into  being  at  its 
touch  !  There  were  all  the  heroes  of  the 
Puritan  Revolution  in  England — Hampden, 
Pym,  Sir  Harry  Vane,  John  Howe  and 
John  Owen,  Milton,  the  seer  and  prophet 
as  well  as  the  poet  of  the  Commonwealth, 
and  Cromwell,  the  kingliest  soul  that  ever 
ruled  Great  Britain.  In  later  days  there 
have  been  such  men  as  Bright  in  Parlia- 
ment, Gordon  in  the  field,  Dale,  Maclaren, 
and  Spurgeon  in  the  pulpit,  and  Robert 
Browning  among  the  poets.  The  history 
of  America'  in  large  part  is  either  the  history 
of  Puritanism,  or  of  those  who  were  made 
great  by  its  ideals.  Ideally  this  Republic 
rests  on  these  four  corner-stones:  the  right 
and  privilege  of  the  individual  to  come  into 


AND    THE  MODERN   WORLD.  89 

the  immediate  presence  of  God;  absolute 
freedom  in  all  matters  of  religion ;  righteous- 
ness of  character  essential  to  public  service; 
and,  the  universal  brotherhood  of  man. 
These  truths  have  commanded  the  loyalty 
of  the  best  men  in  our  churches;  they  have 
inspired  our  noblest  preachers;  they  thrill 
in  the  music  of  poets  like  Lowell,  Whittier, 
Longfellow;  they  are  recognized  by  so 
many  of  our  politicians  as  have  learned  that 
the  State  was  made  for  man  and  not  man 
for  the  State.  The  most  beneficent  and 
enduring  elements  in  the  political,  social, 
literary,  religious  life  of  the  world  for  two 
hundred  years  either  has  been  the  expres- 
sion of  the  Puritan  spirit  or  from  it  has  re- 
ceived inspiration.  And  this  leads  now  to 
a  more  important  inquiry. 

Is  there  any  Serious  Demand  in  the  Modern 
World  for  that  whicJi  is  Essential  in  the 
Principles  of  Puritanism  ? 

Before  that  question  can  be  intelligently 
answered  we  must  have  some  accurate  ideas 


90  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

about  this  modern  world.  It  has  great  ex- 
cellencies; has  it  any  serious  perils?  I  shall 
limit  the  field  of  observation  to  our  own 
country.  He  who  knows  the  dominant 
forces  in  any  one  civilized  nation  practically 
knows  those  of  the  world.  Four  facts  meet 
every  student  of  the  history  of  our  country 
and  of  our  time. 

There  is  a  wide-spread  and  growing  ten- 
dency toward  the  effacement  of  the  feeling 
of  individual  responsibility  to  God.  The 
everlasting  obligation  of  men  to  choose 
right,  and  their  moral  peril  if  they  refuse, 
is  not  as  vivid  as  it  should  be.  Thomas 
Carlyle  said  that  the  Puritan  Revolution 
was  the  last  of  the  heroisms.  He  was 
wrong.  Heroism  is  the  monopoly  of  no  age 
and  no  creed,  and  its  source  is  always  in  the 
consciousness  of  responsibility  to  God. 
Cromwell  refused  to  be  king  because  he  was 
not  convinced  that  God  had  called  him  to 
wear  a  crown.  How  many  vacant  chairs 
there  would  be  in  the  high  places  of  govern- 
ment if  all  who  have  not  heard  a  divine  call 


AND    THE   MODERN    WORLD,  9^ 

were  to  retire  from  public  service !  We  have 
Tammany  politics,  the  defeat  of  Arbitration 
Treaties,  and  juggling  with  municipal  fran- 
chises, because  God  has  no  place  in  the 
plans  of  those  who  sit  in  legislative  halls ;  ^ 
we  have  pagan  immoralities  introduced  at 
banquets,  and  pagan  vice  winked  at  in  high 
places,  because  a  day  in  which  God  will 
judge  every  man  is  no  longer  dreaded;  we 
have  monopolies  reaching  out  to  embrace 
and  strangle  our  liberties,  because  greed  of 
gold  and  power  has  blinded  men  to  God, 

Another  characteristic  of  our  time  is  a 
misconception  of  what  is  meant  by  intellec- 
tual and  spiritual  freedom.  Liberty  of 
thought  is  the  supreme  achievement  of 
modern  times.  There  is  no  longer  any 
human  authority  in  the  realm  of  religion. 
Councils,  assemblies,  states,  are  all  com- 
posed of  fallible  men.  No  thinking  person 
now  accepts  any  doctrine  in  science,  politi- 
cal economy,  or  religion  solely  because  it  is 
hallowed  by  age  or  has  been  championed  by 
the  great  of  other  times.     There  is  no  holy 


92  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

of  holies  in  the  realm  of  truth.  The  blind 
can  see  that  the  days  of  authority  in  all 
matters  of  thought  are  not  only  numbered 
but  ended.  But  the  pendulum  has  swung 
too  far.  Liberty  of  thought  does  not  mean 
freedom  to  believe  a  lie ;  does  not  mean  that 
there  is  no  authority  in  truth;  does  not 
mean  that  it  is  of  little  importance  what 
men  believe;  does  not  mean  that  one  creed 
is  as  good  as  another.  And  yet  this  fallacy 
is  growing  in  our  land.  It  is  said  that  one 
creed  is  as  good  as  another, — which  means 
there  is  no  truth.  Men  are  asking  what 
they  like  to  believe,  not  what  they  ought  to 
believe.  Freedom  to  think  and  to  express 
thought  is  a  condition  of  growth;  freedom 
to  think  without  the  consciousness  of  obli- 
gation to  accept  truth  and  cling  to  it  forever 
is  a  delusion  and  a  peril.  That  was  a  wise 
word  of  the  author  of  The  Way  Out  of 
Agnosticism:  **  Either  we  must  cease  to 
think,  or  learn  to  think  m^ore  profoundly.** 
Let  us  cling  to  our  liberty,  but  remember 
that  that  does  not  mean  freedom  to  play 


AND    THE  MODERN   WORLD,  93 

with  sanctities, — to  seek  to  revive  mysteries 
which  have  been  dead  so  long  that  no  one 
knows  when  they  died ;  but  rather  the  duty 
to  think,  to  think  hard,  to  think  long;  until 
there  shall  come  a  ghmpse  of  the  unity 
in  which  all  things  cohere,  or  until  there 
breaks  upon  the  vision  such  a  revelation  as 
is  given  only  to  those  who  reverently  and 
patiently  knock  at  the  door  of  truth. 

A  third  characteristic  of  the  modern  world 
is  a  dimming  of  the  lines  which  separate 
virtue  and  vice,  right  and  wrong.  This  is 
evident  most  of  all  in  current  social  and 
domestic  ideals.  The  civilization  of  a 
nation  is  always  according  to  its  standard  of 
moral  purity.  Those  who  reverence  and 
safeguard  their  homes  prosper  and  endure; 
those  who  are  fascinated  by  immoralities 
sow  the  seed  of  their  own  decay.  In  these 
days  Puritanism  is  sneered  at  in  high  circles 
as  prudery,  and  the  divorce  courts  are  mills 
that  never  cease  to  grind  a  baleful  grist. 

There   is  yet  one   more  characteristic  of 
our  time  and  our  nation  which  it  is  painful 


94  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

to  state  and  more  painful  to  be  compelled 
to  recognize.  We  are  living  in  a  republic 
and  compelled  to  witness  the  defeat  of  the 
people.  If  I  were  asked,  What  is  the  most 
ominous  fact  in  the  life  of  this  country 
to-day?  I  should  without  hesitation  answer, 
The  defeat  of  the  people.  The  fundamen- 
tal principle  of  modern  civilization  is  the 
right  of  the  people  to  rule;  but  in  this 
country  at  least  the  people  do  not  rule. 
Two  very  simple  illustrations  will  suffice — 
but  they  might  be  indefinitely  multiplied. 

In  a  small  town  the  question  is  merely 
one  of  the  granting  of  a  franchise  to  a 
trolley  company.  The  people  say:  '*  Re- 
strict and  safeguard,  and  let  it  come;"  but 
outside  monopolies,  thinking  only  of  divi- 
dends, either  buy  up  a  council,  or  procure 
special  legislation  and  drive  through  their 
own  schemes  without  the  slightest  regard  to 
the  wishes  of  those  who  own  the  property, 
whose  homes  are  invaded,  and  whose  life- 
purposes  are  ruined.  Thus  the  people  are 
defeated. 


AND    THE   MODERN    WORLD,  95 

Two  great  nations,  after  glaring  at  each 
other  for  more  than  a  century  conclude  that 
they  have   shaken   fists   long  enough,    and 
that  they  had  better  clasp  hands  and  prove 
themselves  the   brothers  that  they   are   in 
blood,  in  language,  in  history,  in  religion; 
and  the  people  in  both  nations  lift  such  a 
cry  of  gladness  as  has  not  been  heard  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century.     This  is  the  people's 
business,    and    they    have    a    right    to    be 
heeded.     But  no ;  the  machinery  of  govern- 
ment is  straightway  invoked  that  prejudice 
may  rule  and  the  people  be  humiliated  and 
disgraced.     Thus  government  of  the  people, 
for  the  people,  and  by  the  people  has  failed 
almost  before  the  echoes  of  Lincoln's  ora- 
tion have  died  away.     I  do  not  speak  as  a 
pessimist.     It  is  not  pessimism  to  face  facts. 
Most    of  our    cities    are    ruled    by   corrupt 
oligarchies;    most  of  our  states  are  in  the 
hands  of  selfish  politicians ;  and  international 
problems,  instead  of  being  solved  by  repre- 
sentatives   of   the    people,   are    shelved  by 
those  who  misrepresent  them. 


9^  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

These  four  facts  cannot  be  evaded ;  they 
should  be  honestly  and  fearlessly  faced: 
Consciousness  of  individual  responsibility  to 
God  is  dim ;  playing  with  everlasting  realities 
is  called  liberty  of  thought;  the  line  be- 
tween right  and  wrong,  purity  and  vice,  is 
being  rubbed  out;  and,  the  people  are  sys- 
tematically and  constantly  defeated.  This 
is  not  all  there  is  to  modern  life,  but  these 
are  our  perils. 

What  does  this  modern  world  need?  A 
revival  of  Puritanism.  Individuals  and 
society  should  rise  to  a  comprehension  of 
the  truth  that  all  men  live  in  the  presence 
of  the  Almighty,  and  are  responsible  to 
him.  What  made  the  Ironsides  invincible? 
They  could  fight  all  day  because  they  had 
prayed  all  night.  They  endured  as  seeing 
Him  who  is  invisible.  On  the  field  of 
Dunbar  Cromwell  snatched  victory  from 
what  had  seemed  sure  defeat.  When  the 
sun  rose  and  the  enemy  fled,  he  halted  his 
troops  and,  riding  before  them,  sang,  "  Let 
God  arise;   let  his  enemies  be  scattered!" 


AND    THE   MODERN  WORLD.  97 

God  may  be  realized, — that  realization 
makes  prophets  and  heroes.  Introduce 
into  our  modern  life  the  glad  and  awful 
reality  that  God  besets  us  behind  and 
before;  that  there  is  no  space  in  the  uni- 
verse in  which  any  man  can  hide  from  him ; 
bring  out  again  the  fact  of  a  judgment-seat 
before  which  all  some  time  and  somehow 
must  stand, — and  there  will  be  less  trifling 
with  the  everlasting  sanctities.  Those 
who  have  seen  God  will  not  dare  his  dis- 
pleasure. This  is  what  the  modern  world 
most  needs.  Preachers  who  experience 
God  will  have  time  neither  for  pyrotech- 
nics nor  pantomime;  teachers  will  realize 
with  Thomas  Arnold  that  a  life  of  truth- 
fulness and  genuineness  is  the  first  and 
most  inspiring  of  all  instruction ;  and  legis- 
lators will  enter  capitals  with  the  humility 
of  those  who  have  received  a  divine  call. 

As  it  brushes  away  the  assumed  authority 
of  churches,  councils,  schools,  and  all  other 
assemblies  of  presumptuous  and  fallible 
men,    Puritanism    insists   that    while    there 


9S  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

must  be  perfect  freedom  of  thought,  it 
should  be  a  freedom  consistent  with  the 
obligation  of  every  man  to  seek  and  obey 
truth.  Authority  in  the  hands  of  fallible 
men  becomes  an  enormity,  but  the  au- 
thority of  the  truth  can  be  evaded  only  at 
peril.  Puritans  believe  something,  and 
believe  it  with  all  their  hearts.  Like  Crom- 
well, they  protect  others  in  their  beliefs, 
while  they  are  willing  to  fight  and  to  die  for 
their  own.  In  these  days,  when  the  foun- 
dations of  faith  tremble ;  when  the  doctrines 
which  once  made  heroes  are  being  ques- 
tioned; when  foreign  cults  are  coming  in 
like  a  flood;  when  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  world  is  in  a  state  of  unrest,  above 
all  things  there  should  be  intellectual  hon- 
esty and  thoroughness;  unwillingness  to  be 
satisfied  with  any  sham,  however  ancient  or 
honored;  the  determination  to  think  every 
subject  through  until  truth  is  found,  wher- 
ever it  may  lead.  These  qualities  always 
have  been  and  always  will  be  the  very 
essence  of  Puritanism.      Puritanism  can  be 


AND    THE  MODERN    WORLD.  99 

satisfied  only  with  reality.  It  insists  on 
mental  freedom,  and  is  afraid  only  of  that 
which  is  false.  The  modern  world  asks 
what  pleases ;  Puritanism  asks  what  is  right. 
The  modern  world  says:  Every  man  is  at 
liberty  to  think  as  he  chooses;  Puritanism 
replies:  Yes,  so  long  as  he  remembers  that 
no  one  can  escape  from  the  authority  of 
truth. 

The  lines  separating  right  and  wrong,  vir- 
tue and  vice,  are  growing  dim  in  this 
modern  world.  Luxury  and  effeminacy  are 
taking  their  places.  Literature  in  great 
part  is  becoming  mere  dirt,  a  covering  of 
cancers  with  cloth  of  gold ;  the  stage  has 
forgotten  its  Greek  dignity  and  become, 
largely,  a  place  where  vice  panders  to  vice. 
Let  the  old  Puritans  come  back  once  more: 
they  must  never  again  desecrate  cathedrals 
or  dare  to  destroy  that  which  is  beautiful  in 
art;  but  let  them  with  their  austere  morali- 
ties deal  with  the  paganisms,  the  luxuries, 
the  fashionable  vices,  the  polluted  litera- 
ture, and  the  brazen  effrontery  of  those  who 


iOO  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

disgrace  the  stage.  Better  the  time  when 
a  man  was  forbidden  to  kiss  his  wife  on  the 
Lord's  day  than  a  land  without  any  Lord's 
day;  better  the  abolition  of  the  play  than 
plays  which  stimulate  sensuality;  better  a 
solemn  face  than  one  blotched  with  vice. 
The  modern  world  needs  no  distortions  of 
Puritanism,  but  its  essential  spirit  —  the 
spirit  which  will  never  compromise  with 
evil,  and  which  is  as  loyal  to  purity  in  the 
individual,  the  family,  and  society  as  King 
Arthur  was  loyal  to  his  knightly  vows. 

The  sad  fact  which  faces  all  who  love 
their  country  in  these  days  and  in  this 
Republic  is  that  in  the  land  of  freedom,  the 
land  of  Washington,  of  Lincoln  and  of 
Grant,  the  people  for  whom  the  fathers  died 
are  either  defeated  or  in  peril  of  defeat. 
In  the  home  of  brotherhood,  brotherhood  is 
outraged ;  and  where  the  voice  of  the  many 
should  be  heeded  it  is  publicly  derided. 
Nothing  will  give  to  the  American  people 
the  realization  of  their  ideals  but  the  politi- 
cal principle  for  which  the  Pilgrims  stood; 


AND    THE   MODERN    WORLD.         lOI 

namely,   the  people  and  the  whole  people 
acting  together    should  always  be  trusted. 
Above  every  other  truth  Puritanism  places 
God  the  Sovereign,  and  then  declares  that 
before  that   Sovereign  all  men  have  equal 
rights.     It    never   asks   where  a  man  was 
born,  what  is  his  name,  or  what  is  the  color 
of    his    skin;    but    insists    that    the    whole 
people  are  to  be  trusted,  without  regard  to 
accidents  of  birth  or  wealth.     This  world 
belongs  to  all  the  people.     Their  voice  may 
not  always  be  the  voice  of  God,  but  it  is 
nearer  to  it  than  any  other  sound  ever  heard 
on   the   earth.     When   the   people  have    a 
chance  to  speak  their  convictions  they  are 
seldom  wrong.     This  is  the  dispensation  of 
man,  not  of  any  class;  and  yet  classes  stand 
in  the  way  of  man.     Colleges  and  schools, 
press  and  pulpit,  ought  to  unite  in  a  crusade 
for  the  deliverance  of  the  people  from  those 
who,  masquerading  in  the  livery  of  liberty, 
are  its  worst  enemies. 

The   evils  of  the  modern  world  demand 
that   emphasis   once   more    be   strong   and 


102  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

clear   on   the    four    truths   which   are    the 
corner-stones  of  Puritanism: 

All  men  are  responsible  to  God. 

All  must  have  freedom  of  thought,  but 
never  liberty  to  believe  error  or  to  do 
wrong. 

The  line  separating  right  and  wrong  is  an 
everlasting  one;  it  is,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  a  part  of  the  order  of  the  universe. 

The  whole  people,  since  they  have  the 
same  Father  and  the  same  King  in  the  realm 
of  spirit,  have  the  same  rights,  spiritual, 
social,  religious;  and  they  can  be  and  ought 
to  be  trusted. 

The  Pilgrims  to  whom  John  Robinson 
preached  on  that  memorable  day  before  the 
Speedwell  sailed  were  Puritans.  The  Pil- 
grims who  landed  at  Plymouth  were  Puri- 
tans; their  children  who  founded  here  *' a 
Church  without  a  Bishop,  and  a  State  with- 
out a  King,"  were  Puritans.  The  principles 
which  have  given  us  our  right  to  be  called  a 
Christian  nation  were  derived  from  the 
Puritans;  most  of  our  colleges  were  founded 


AND    THE  MODERN    WORLD,         IO3 

by  Puritans;  our  school  system  came  from 
the    Puritans;    our    ideals    are  all    Puritan. 
These  ideals  will  become  realities,  and  the 
American  nation  worthy  to  possess  its  privi- 
leges and  possibilities,  only  as  we  are  loyal 
to  the  principles  and  the  spirit  which  were 
the  inspiration  of  our  fathers.     Our  hope  is 
not  in  Puritanism  in  its  narrowness  and  with 
its  bigotries,  but  in  its  larger  spirit  which 
reveres  God  and  seeks  his  will ;  which  owns 
no  authority  but  truth;   which  believes  in 
righteousness    and  does  right,    and   always 
and  everywhere  trusts  the  people. 

I  have  thus  spoken  of  our  perils  and  our 
needs.  Of  the  outcome  I  have  no  doubt. 
There  is  no  room  for  pessimism  in  the  creed 
of  a  Christian.  We  may  seem  to  have  for- 
gotten the  hoHest  ideals,  but  we  shall  not 
swing  entirely  away  from  them.  Through 
the  generations  one  increasing  purpose  runs. 
God  fulfills  his  plans  in  many  ways.  To  a 
heroic  service  our  fathers  were  called:  a 
service  equally  important  and  imperative 
belongs  to  their  children.     Let  us  gird  our- 


104  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

selves  like  men  for  our  mission,  and  never 
doubt  that  the  victory  will  be  with  those 
who  side  with  God. 

I  have  chosen  this  subject  for  this  occasion 
because  no  pulpit  ever  more  continuously, 
consistently,  and  unflinchingly  represented 
that  which  is  essential  and  enduring  in  Puri- 
tanism than  the  one  in  which  I  have  the 
honor  to  stand  to-night,  and  which  has  been 
distinguished  by  the  incomparable  ministry 
of  the  man  whose  first  sermon  in  this  city 
we  are  this  day  celebrating.  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  strange  as  the  saying  may  sound 
in  some  ears,  was  a  Puritan  of  the  Puritans. 
He  had  no  patience  with  the  narrowness 
and  hardness  of  many  who  bore  that  great 
name.  He  delighted  in  the  beautiful,  and 
would  never  have  sanctioned  the  defacing 
of  the  cathedrals.  He  rejoiced  in  all  that 
makes  this  world  bright  and  glad,  and  we 
cannot  think  of  him  with  a  demure  face  or 
as  discouraging  innocent  pleasure.  But 
underneath  all  the  exuberance  of  his  nature 
was  such  a  realization  of  God  as  few  men 
have  experienced,  and  that  was  the  unfail- 


AND    THE   MODERN    WORLD.         I05 

ing  source  of  his  personality  and  ministry. 
To  him  the  birds  sang  the  songs  of  God  ;  the 
winds  echoed  the  music  of  God;  the  waters 
reflected  the  beauty  of  God;  the  heavens 
declared  the  glory  of  God.  The  secret  of 
his  power  was  in  his  realization  that  he,  like 
a  little  child,  could  come  into  the  very  pres- 
ence of  the  Almighty.  Out  of  that  con- 
sciousness poured  his  ministry  like  a  broad, 
deep  river, — sometimes  placid  like  summer 
waters;  sometimes  dark  and  threatening; 
sometimes  rushing  and  turbulent,  but  al- 
ways flowing  steadily  from  an  inexhaustible 
fountain. 

Because  he  appreciated  his  responsibility 
to  God,  he  insisted  as  few  in  any  time  have 
insisted  on  the  privilege  and  duty  of  every 
man  to  think  for  himself,  and  he  never 
doubted  that  to  all  who  think  honestly  and 
bravely  will  some  time  be  given  the  realiza- 
tion of  God, 

Because  he  had  seen  God,  he  preached 
righteousness  with  a  power  which  has  never 
been  surpassed.  His  sermons  thrill  with 
reverence  for  the  moral  order  of  the  world. 


I06  PURITAN  PRINCIPLES 

No  medieval  Calvinist  was  more  constant  or 
terrible  in  his  denunciations  of  evil ;  and  no 
disciple  of  modern  thought  ever  more  per- 
suasively presented  the  beauty  of  holiness. 

Because  he  believed  in  God,  he  believed 
in  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  that  the 
whole  people  could  be  trusted ;  and  with 
amazing  eloquence  he  proclaimed  that  doc- 
trine until  the  land  he  loved  became  a  land 
without  a  slave. 

This  greatest  preacher  of  the  modern 
world  was  one  of  the  most  distinctly  typical 
Puritans  of  this  or  any  time.  It  is  not  for 
me  to  eulogize  Henry  Ward  Beecher ;  he 
needs  no  eulogy,  either  in  this  church  or 
this  city ;  but  it  is  a  joy  to  be  able  to  recall 
once  more  the  truths  which  he  loved  and 
proclaimed,  and  in  the  faith  of  which  he 
lived  and  died.  When  he  passed  into  the 
silent  land 

"  It  seemed  there  came,  but  faint, 
As  from  beyond  the  limit  of  the  world, 
Like  the  last  echo  born  of  a  great  cry, 
Sounds,  as  if  some  fair  city  were  one  voice 
Around  a  king  returning  from  his  wars." 


Mcccbcfs  Ifntluence  upon  IRellotous 
Ubougbt  in  BnalanD* 


CHARLES   A.  BERRY. 


III. 

**:Bccc]Kt5  Ifntluence  upon  IReltolous 
XTbou^bt  in  Bnglant)/'' 

By  Rev.  CHARLES  A.  BERRY,  D.D., 
Wolverhampton,  England. 

In  recognition  of  the  fact  that  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  beloved  as  the  pastor  of  this 
church,  was  yet  the  property  of  Christen- 
dom, and  by  a  delicate  and  gracious  cour- 
tesy, I  have  been  called  from  the  shores 
of  my  fatherland,  and  from  the  home  and 
work  I  love,  to  speak  to  you  to-day  upon 
the  influence  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  on 
teaching  and  preaching  in  Great  Britain. 
But  before  proceeding  to  that  task,  not  less 
grateful  because  difficult,  it  is  my  duty,  as 
it  is  my  privilege  and  my  joy,  to  express  to 


'  Plymouth  Church,  Sunday  morning,  Nov.  7,  1897. 

109 


110       BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

the  pastor,  the  officers,  the  members  of  this 
famous  and  influential  church,  the  congratu- 
lations and  the  good  wishes  of  a  host  of 
sister  churches  across  the  Atlantic  waves. 
My  own  church  especially,  which  has  more 
than  once  come  into  close  and  sacred  rela- 
tions with  Plymouth,  and  never  into  rela- 
tions more  co-operative  or  effective  than 
when,  during  a  recent  and  regrettable  crisis, 
we  exchanged  cablegrams  of  mutual  petition 
for  the  preservation  of  peace  and  the  resto- 
ration of  good  will  between  America  and 
England,  has  charged  me  to  express  to  you 
the  warmest  sentiments  of  appreciation  and 
regard,  and  most  cordial  prayers  for  your 
enlarged  usefulness  and  prosperity  in  the 
new  half-century  on  which  you  have  entered 
this  year.  The  welfare  of  Plymouth  is  in- 
deed the  solicitude  of  all  English-speaking 
Christendom,  not  merely  because  of  recog- 
nized debt  to  the  ministries  and  achieve- 
ments of  a  glorious  past,  but  because  of 
sincere  desire  to  have  those  ministries 
attested  and    confirmed   in  a  solid,    sober, 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND,    III 

unbroken,  and  apostolical  succession  of 
saintly  and  serviceable  fellowship.  The 
severest,  and  therefore  the  truest,  test, 
whether  of  a  pastorate  or  of  a  church,  and 
especially  where  great  publicity  and  popu- 
larity have  attended  their  union,  is  reached 
only  when  the  two  are  sundered — when,  on 
one  hand,  the  contagious  and  constraining 
vitalities  of  a  great  personality  are  with- 
drawn, and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  respon- 
sive enthusiasms  of  an  appreciative  people 
are  denied  the  magnetic  excitation  of  thrill- 
ing voice,  and  kindling  eye,  and  gold-tipped 
winged  eloquence,  and  are  driven  back  for 
their  awakenment  and  sustenance  upon  the 
quieter  but  more  reliable  agencies  of  in- 
tellectual and  spiritual  understanding. 
Then  it  is  that  the  secret  comes  out  whether 
or  not  pastor  and  people  have  been  walking 
in  a  vain  show;  whether  or  not,  in  his 
attraction  of  great  multitudes,  the  pastor 
has  neglected  the  training  and  the  discipline 
of  a  living  church;  whether  or  not  the 
people,  seemingly  so  zealous  for  God  and 


112       BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

humanity,  are  the  dupes  of  a  sensuous  spell, 
the  victims  of  mere  ravishing  oratory,  or  the 
intelligent  and  devoted  disciples  and  ser- 
vants of  a  beautiful  gospel,  made  credible 
by  the  genius  of  a  heaven-sent  interpreter. 
And  it  is  from  that  point  of  view,  if  I  may 
venture  so  to  express  it  here  this  morning, 
that  the  friends  of  Plymouth  Church  in 
Britain  discover  their  deepest  satisfaction 
and  joy. 

Ten  years  have  passed,  and  well-nigh 
eleven,  since  he  was  taken  whose  name  will 
forever  be  entwined  with  some  of  your 
greatest  national  achievements  and  most  of 
your  ecclesiastical  and  theological  progress. 
And  what  do  we  see  around  us  to-day  ?  A 
living  church — large,  compact,  earnest,  rev- 
erent, devoted,  as  rich  in  organization  as  it 
is  in  life,  still  occupying  its  place  down  here 
right  in  the  midst  of  this  thronged  and 
crowded  city,  a  center  of  one  of  the  most 
gifted  and  devoted  Christian  bands  to  be 
found  anywhere  in  the  world,  a  church  laden 
with   holiest  traditions  and  memories,  and 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND.    113 

yet  alive  and  devoted  to  the  thought  and 
duty  of  to-day.  This  is  the  true  Beecher 
memorial,  not  that  brass  medallion  (speak- 
ing as  is  the  likeness,  it  suggests  more  than 
it  contains);  not  yon  bronze  statue,  erected 
by  the  love  and  reverence  of  grateful  citi- 
zens; not  any  printed  or  spoken  eulogy,  apt 
to  become  exaggerated,  or,  in  fear  of  ex- 
aggeration, to  fail  in  tribute ;  but  this  living 
church,  surviving  him,  pulsating  by  his 
spirit,  reproducing  his  ideas  and  ideals — 
this  living  church,  that  loved  and  loves 
him  so  well  as  to  turn  from  mere  grief  or 
reminiscence  to  active  service — this  is  his 
memorial.  And  we  across  the  water  thank 
God  that  his  memorial  is  in  the  form  of  a 
living  fellowship  rather  than  of  cold  marble 
or  printed  eulogy. 

And  what  is  thus  the  best  memorial  to 
the  man  who  is  gone  is  the  best  tribute  to 
the  church  that  remains,  and  to  him  who 
reluctantly,  nervously,  in  spite  of  feelings 
that  his  work  lay  in  other  directions,  took 
up  the  leadership  of  this  church,   and  has 


114       BEE  CHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

maintained,  as  he  still  maintains  it,  in 
efficiency  of  Christian  instruction  and  Chris- 
tian service. 

Our  congratulations  to-day  from  across 
the  water  are  deep  and  sincere.  We  rejoice 
with  you  over  your  great  and  glorious  past. 
We  enter,  if  with  surprise  yet  with  the  more 
grateful  joy,  into  your  loving  and  fruitful 
present.  We  join  hands  with  you  in  peti- 
tioning that,  as  in  the  past  and  in  the 
present,  so  in  days  to  come,  you  may  enjoy 
the  conscious  presence  of  the  Master,  and 
work  effectively  by  the  grace  and  power  of 
the  Holy  Ghost. 

Now,  from  what  I  have  said,  it  will  be 
quite  clear  to  you  that  this  memorial  ser- 
vice, at  least  as  far  as  I  am  concerned,  is 
neither  to  be  an  exhibition  of  vain  and 
reminiscent  regret,  nor  a  mere  ebullition  of 
foolish  and  degrading  idolatry.  If  to-day 
we  look  back,  it  is  to  relearn  the  lessons,  to 
catch  the  inspirations,  which  sprang  from 
the  lips  and  the  mind  of  your  great  preacher. 
If  to-day,  in  looking  back,  we  concentrate 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND.    II5 

our  thoughts  upon  a  man,  it  is  not  that  we 
may  glorify  him  or  raise  him  to  false  emi- 
nence in  the  thought  and  affection  of  Chris- 
tendom, but  that  we  may  glorify  God  in 
him — the  God  who  made,  the  God  who 
inspired  him.  There  is,  as  we  all  know,  a 
false  hero-worship,  the  worship  of  a  man 
which  hides  God,  and  which  the  more 
shrivels  the  heart  because  playing  upon  it 
the  fiction  of  enlargement.  But  there  is  a 
hero-worship  that  is  true,  that  is  divine, 
that  is  enlarging  and  sweetening.  A  great 
man  is  God's  best  gift  to  men.  Not  to 
recognize  and  not  to  cherish  him  is  to 
blaspheme  the  bounty  and  the  grace  of 
God.  It  were,  indeed,  as  easy  to  blot  out 
from  a  landscape  the  mountain  that  rears  its 
snowy  crest  beyond  the  clouds,  as  to  forget 
or  to  ignore  the  presence  of  great  personali- 
ties in  God's  earth  and  in  Christ's  church. 

That  doctrine  of  equality  which  declares 
that  one  man  is  as  good  as  another  is  a  lie. 
Equality  of  privilege,  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity,   equality    as    sinners    before    God, 


Il6      BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

equality  as  rightful  claimants  upon  God  for 
saving  grace — that  is  the  true  equality. 
But  in  God's  world,  some- are  made  tQ  lead 
and  some  to  follow,  some  to  teach  and 
some  to  learn;  and  any  driveling  doctrine 
of  equality  which  would  erect  the  lowest, 
the  meanest,  the  least  capable  into  line  with 
the  foremost,  has  written  upon  it  the  abso- 
lute rejection  of  God.  His  great  men  he 
sends  to  be  brothers  and  to  be  servants; 
but  their  brotherhood  and  their  service  are 
constituted  in  this,  that  they  must  teach, 
that  they  must  be  obeyed,  that  they  must 
lead,  that  they  must  be  followed.  God  has 
gifted  them  with  such  amplitude  as  to  live 
in  them  for  the  example  and  guidance  of 
mankind.  And  hence  it  is  that  in  the  New 
Testament  we  never  can  get  away  from  the 
personality  of  St.  Paul.  Modest  as  he 
was,  conscious  of  his  ill-desert  in  presence 
of  the  Eternal,  knowing  as  none  other  could 
know  the  limitations  and  debilities  of  his 
own  soul,  yet  was  he  conscious  that  God 
had  put  grace  into  him,  and  gifts  such  as 


RELIGIOUS   THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND.    II7 

constituted  him  servant  and  leader  of  all. 
And  throughout  his  epistles  we  find  that, 
with  delicacy  but  with  unmistakable  mean- 
ing, he  puts  his  own  case  to  the  front,  that 
men  might  think,  not  of  him,  but  of  the 
grace  of  God  that  made  him;  not  of  his 
eloquence,  not  of  his  fame,  not  of  his  per- 
sonality, but  of  the  wondrous  power  and 
the  redemptive  efficiency  of  the  love  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

And  so  we  think  to-day  of  Henry  Ward 
Beecher.  You  cannot  shut  out  his  per- 
sonality. Why  should  you  try  ?  By  so 
much  as  that  personality  made  the  world 
brighter,  God's  thought  clearer,  man's  duty 
simpler,  life's  sufferings  easier  to  be  borne, 
in  that  measure  he  was  a  fresh  incarnation 
of  the  Eternal  Love.  For  that  reason 
we  glorify  God  in  him,  and  we  pray  that 
the  succession,  the  true  apostolic  and  saint- 
ly succession,  of  God's  great  and  gifted 
ones  may  never  cease  until  this  weary  world 
has  passed  through  all  the  phases  of  its 
travail  and  its  discipline,  and  is  merged  in 


Il8       BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

the  shadowless  light  and  the  ineffable  love 
of  God. 

But  now  from  these  general  remarks  I 
turn  to  my  more  specific  subject.  I  am  not 
to  speak  of  Beecher  in  the  entirety  of  his 
life — which  is  as  merciful  for  me  as  for  you; 
for,  if  I  began  to  get  beyond  the  fringe  of 
that  great  personality,  you  would  not  get 
dismissal  until  sunrise  to-morrow,  and  then 
I  should  not  have  passed  the  first  head  of 
the  discourse.  I  am  to  speak  of  Beecher's 
influence  on  the  thought  and  preaching  of 
England.  That  assumes  that  Beecher  had 
an  influence  upon  the  thought  and  preach- 
ing of  England;  and  I  am  here  to-day  to 
affirm  that  he  had  a  distinct  and  effective 
influence  in  those  great  departments  of  life. 
Now,  put  that  fact  into  juxtaposition  with 
another  fact,  which  helps  to  interpret  it  and 
to  fix  its  true  value.  Henry  Ward  Beecher 
was  seldom  seen  and  seldom  heard  by  the 
great  masses  of  the  people  in  my  country. 
Only  a  fraction  of  the  religious  leaders  and 
teachers  of  Britain  ever  saw  that  face  which 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND,    II9 

reflected  so  much  of  the  sunniness  of  God. 
It  will  appear  to  you  quite  clear,  then,  that 
his  influence  was  not  the  influence  of  per- 
sonal presence,  of  captivating  eloquence, 
but  was  the  influence  of  thought  when 
reduced  to  the  cold  and  lifeless  level  of  a 
printed  page.  That  fact  is  of  value  in 
determining  the  quality  of  Henry  Ward 
Beecher's  ministry. 

There  is  a  foolish  idea  in  many  quarters 
that  the  orator  and  the  thinker  can  never  be 
one  and  the  same  man ;  that  the  orator  is  a 
man  devoted  to  the  tricks  of  speech,  depend- 
ent for  his  power  upon  the  resourcefulness 
of  a  contagious  personality;  and  that  the 
thinker,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  man  who 
necessarily  must  withdraw  himself  from  all 
the  activities  of  the  world,  and  from  the 
influence  of  great  public  assemblies.  Never 
was  greater  mistake  made  in  the  estimate  of 
function  and  faculty.  There  can  be  rhetoric 
without  thought,  but  never  oratory.  For 
what  is  the  orator?  The  orator  is,  what  the 
word  that  signifies  him  etymologically  sug- 


120       BEE  CHER'S   INFLUENCE    UPON 

gests,  the  man  who  beseeches,  the  man  who 
reasons,  the  man  who  pleads,  the  man  who 
wins.  He  is  the  petitioner,  the  prophet. 
And  what  is  the  prophet?  The  man  who 
speaks  for  God  to  men  in  winsome  speech — 
speech  that  interprets  the  Eternal — and  so 
interprets  him  that  men  want  to  rush  after 
him  and  to  embrace  him.  The  prophet  is 
the  poet  and  the  orator.  The  rhetorician, 
the  man  of  words — reduce  him  to  a  printed 
page,  and  you  kill  both  him  and  his  speech. 
Beecher  was  a  thinker  gifted  of  God  with 
fine  faculty  of  vision ;  he  saw  into  the  deep 
things  of  God,  and  what  he  saw,  God  gave 
him  tongue  and  lip  to  speak.  And  so  his 
oratory  was  lifted  far  above  the  wind  and 
bluster  of  the  rhetorician,  and  became  the 
fine  vehicle  of  thoughts  that  burn,  emotions 
that  kindle,  and  reasons  that  bend  the  will 
and  inspire  the  soul. 

But  when  we  turn  to  ask  what,  in  this 
realm  of  thought,  was  Beecher's  contribution 
to  modern  Christendom,  we  confront  a  task 
less  easy;  for  during  the  period  of  Henry 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND.    121 

Ward  Beecher's  life  we  in  England  at  least, 
and  you  in  America,  I  dare  say,  came  under 
the  sweep  and  influence  of  a  whole  host  of 
new  thinkers  and  new  workers.  I  will  speak 
of  the  land  I  know. 

In  England,  during  these  fifty  years  past, 
we  have  seen  the  rise  of  Colenso  and 
Biblical  criticism;  and,  young  as  I  am, 
I  am  old  enough  to  remember  the  viru- 
lent and  contemptuous  abuse  heaped  upon 
the  head  of  Bishop  Colenso  for  his  daring 
pioneer  work  in  the  task  of  rightly  under- 
standing the  Scriptures  of  God.  But  his 
name  and  presence  have  been  influential 
these  fifty  years  in  guiding  the  thought 
and  method  of  Christian  teachers.  During 
the  same  period,  at  the  very  opposite  ex- 
treme, one  sees  John  Henry  Newman  and 
the  Oxford  Movement  leading  men  away 
from  all  inquiry  and  from  all  research  into 
absolute  surrender  to  ecclesiastical,  not  to 
say  Papal,  authority.  Right  in  the  midst 
of  this  same  generation  rises  a  figure,  re- 
fined,   modest,    little    seen    while    yet    the 


122       BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

figure    lived,    much    loved    since    the    man 
within  the  figure  passed  up  into  the  eter- 
nal.      Frederick     William     Robertson,     of 
Brighton,    has    been    in    England    perhaps 
the  most  widely  potent  religious  force   of 
the  Victorian  era,  introducing  preachers  to 
a  method   of   Biblical  interpretation  which 
made  the  Book  more  divine  by  making  it 
more  human,  lifting  the  truth  of  God  into 
celestial  light  by  showing  how  its  ramifica- 
tions   reached    through   all   the    darknesses 
and    shadows    of    human    life.     There,    in 
a  quiet  little  retreat,  among  souls  kindred 
with  his  own,  sits  John  Frederick  Denison 
Maurice,  seeing    deeply,   speaking  simply, 
so  throwing  himself  into  his  message  that 
men   from    the   professions,    and    especially 
from  the  legal  profession,  gathering  around 
him,   got  so   much  of    the  man   that   they 
could   not  hold    him,    but  gave   him  forth 
throughout   England,   and    made   him    one 
of  the  foremost  of   our  theological  teachers. 
Arthur    Penrhyn    Stanley,    in    the    Abbey 
of   Westminster,   shedding    that    sweetness 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND,    1 23 

and  light  of  which  Matthew  Arnold  spoke 
so  much  and  exhibited  so  little;  George 
Macdonald,  writing  novels,  but  into  them 
throwing  the  ne.w  religious  spirit,  and  in- 
terpreting through  literature  some  of  the 
profoundest,  some  of  the  loftiest,  theolog- 
ical truths;  A.  J.  Scott  in  Manchester,  and 
Baldwin  Brown  in  London,  bringing  back  to 
men  the  great  truth  about  the  Fatherhood 
of  God,  and  making  that  Fatherhood,  in- 
stead of  the  ancient  sovereignty,  the  center 
of  theological  systems — these,  and  the  like 
of  these,  have  all  been  busy  in  England  dur- 
ing the  Victorian  era,  teaching,  enlarging, 
sweetening  the  Church  of  Christ. 

And  yet,  among  them  all,  not  hindmost, 
but  foremost,  was  the  man  who  was  pastor 
of  this  church ;  foremost  in  thought-leader- 
ship and  influence,  because  speaking  to  men 
as  preacher,  not  as  mere  academic  student, 
not  as  mere  recluse  reading  books  and 
thinking  thoughts  in  silence,  but  as  a 
preacher  who  had  seen  visions,  and  dreamed 
dreams,  and   gripped   problems,   and   found 


124       BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

out  new  ways  to  emancipation  and  progress. 
Beecher  thus  shines  as  one  of  the  brightest 
stars  of  our  mpdern  firmament,  one  of  the 
beautifulest  of  the  gifts  of  God  to  these 
later  days* 

What  shall  we  say  was  his'  precise  con- 
tribution to  this  manifold  and  greatly  en- 
riched age  ?  I  will  say,  in  the  first  place, 
Beecher's  greatest  work  was  that  he  helped 
to  bring  back  Christendom  to  the  realization 
and  enjoyment  of  the  living  Christ.  Do 
not  misapprehend  my  meaning,  or  imagine 
that  I  am  implying  an  absence  of  Christ 
from  the  generations  that  went  before  ours. 
Not  even  theologies  could  banish  Christ  out 
of  the  world  into  which  he  had  once  come 
as  Redeemer;  and  he  has  been  here  through 
all  the  ages,  living  and  working  with  men. 
But,  alas!  how  often  has  Christ  been  here, 
as  God  was  with  Cyrus  of  old,  girding  him, 
yet  unknown  by  him,  undiscerned  by  him. 
It  sometimes  seems  to  me  that  the  mediaeval 
epochs  of  Christian  life  are  well  represented 
in  that  Disciples'  walk  to  Emmaus  with  the 


RELIGIOIJS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND.    1 25 

Master,  when,  with  glowing  heart,  they 
knew  they  were  in  the  presence  of  a  great 
teacher,  but  with  holden  eyes  they  did,  not 
see  him,  did  not  know  him. 

Beecher's  work  has  been  to  open  men's 
eyes  to  the  fact  that  He  who  makes  the  star 
to  glow,  He  who  lifts  the  hopes  and  pur- 
poses of  Christendom,  is  none  other  than 
the  Son  of  God,  and  that  he  is  not  dead 
but  risen  and  living;  and  that  He  who  lives 
and  sits  upon  the  throne  descends  and 
dwells  with  us,  nearer  to  us  than  breathing, 
closer  than  hands  or  feet. 

Very  early  in  the  story  of  the  Christian 
church  did  Christ  come  to  be  more  of  a 
historic  person  than  of  a  Living  Presence, 
more  of  a  dim  and  distant  reminiscence  on 
the  page  of  history  than  a  deliverer  and 
companion  standing  by  our  side.  The 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  to  which  with 
reverence  and  with  thankfulness  I  personally 
acknowledge  deep  debts  of  gratitude  for 
many  things  bright  and  beautiful,  yet  did 
this  wrong  to  Christendom,  that  it  placed 


126      BEE  CHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

itself  between  the  believer  and  his  Lord, 
and  taught  men  to  look  for  Christ  in  a 
sensuous  sacrament,  in  a  visible  priest,  in 
a  ritual  service,  and  created,  however  un- 
wittingly, in  the  thought  of  Christendom, 
this  feeling,  that  only  there  could  Christ  be 
found ;  that  outside  of  those  sacred  walls 
men  walked  and  worked,  and  fought  and 
suffered,  without  his  close  companionship 
and  inspiration.  And  when,  in  due  course, 
Luther  arose  in  his  might,  with  a  waiting 
and  willing  Europe  at  his  back,  to  smite  the 
shackles  of  the  Catholic  Church  from  the 
neck  of  Christendom,  alas,  alas!  men  went 
and  put  the  Bible  where  the  Pope  had  put 
the  Church — put  there  the  Bible,  and  doc- 
trines springing  from  the  Bible — and  re- 
created a  sense  of  limitation  in  the  spiritual 
universe,  causing  men  to  think  and  believe 
that  in  the  Book  and  nowhere  else  could 
they  find  Christ  or  learn  anything  about 
him,  and  that  in  the  doctrines  of  the  Church 
they  had  the  embodiment,  such  as  it  was, 
of  the  Master's  presence  with  his  people. 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND,    1^7 

And  so  the  Church  struggled  on,  weak- 
ened and  h'mited  by  these  false  conceptions 
of  Christ,  and  of  the  way  to  Christ,  until  in 
our  own  age,  from  every  quarter  of  the 
compass,  hungering  souls  cried  out  for  the 
Living  God,  for  the  Christ  who  said  that  he 
would  come  back  again  and  dwell  in  his 
church  and  with  his  people;  and  foremost 
among  those  called  to  interpret  this  cry  of 
the  heart  and  to  guide  men  to  the  Living 
Saviour  was  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  who 
himself  had  found  the  way,  and  whose 
whole  life  and  preaching  exhibited  the 
reality,  the  closeness,  the  sacredness  of 
communion  with  Christ. 

In  one  of  those  matchless  epigrammatic 
passages  that  brighten  so  many  of  the 
pages  of  James  Martineau,  I  found  one  day 
this  little  gem  of  definition:  **  Complete 
unbelief  is  attained  when  God  is  driven  as 
much  out  of  the  past  as  we  have  driven 
him  out  of  the  present;  and  complete  belief 
is  reached  when  God  is  made  to  fill  the 
present  as  much  as  piety  causes  him  to  fill 


128       BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

the  past/*  No  truer  word  has  been  spoken 
to  this  generation  than  that.  To  fill  this 
present  with  the  living  God ;  to  have  the 
courage  and  the  truth  to  say  that  if  God  is 
not  here  in  Brooklyn  he  never  was  in  Jeru- 
salem ;  that  if  he  did  not  speak  by  his  gifted 
prophet  here,  he  had  nothing  to  say  to 
Abraham,  nothing  to  David,  nothing  to 
Isaiah,  and  nothing  to  Paul;  and  that  if  he 
be  not  here  a  living  inspiration,  to  comfort 
and  to  quicken  and  to  bless,  the  whole  story 
of  his  unveiling  in  the  past  is  one  vast  but 
beautiful  fiction,  to  be  buried  henceforth 
from  the  thoughts  of  men  —  that  is  the 
truth  and  the  duty  of  this  present  time. 
And  Beecher  led  us  in  England,  as  he  led 
you  in  America,  to  see  God  and  to  know 
that  Christ  is  present,  to  see  the  linea- 
ments of  his  face,  to  bask  in  the  light  of 
his  spirit,  and  to  feel  all  care  and  worry 
and  weakness  and  limitation  removed  by 
the  saving  and  emancipating  touch  of  Christ 
in  the  heart. 

Out  of  this  great  truth,   which  Beecher 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND.    1 29 

taught  US  to  recover,  came  another  truth — 
namely,  that  the  sources  of  theology  are  not 
to  be  found  in  books,  not  even  in  sacred 
books,  but  in  Christian  experience.  Having 
found  the  Living  Christ  and  recognized 
him,  having  come  into  personal  communion 
with  him  and  felt  the  glow  of  the  heart,  and 
the  broadening  of  the  vision,  and  the  sweet- 
ening of  the  temper,  and  the  quickening  of 
all  the  perceptive  and  appreciative  faculties, 
it  was  an  easy  and  a  necessary  step  to  the 
conclusion  that  here  are  the  great  facts  on 
which  theology  is  built,  out  of  which  the- 
ology must  be  formed.  As  the  scientist 
goes  to  nature  for  his  facts,  and  proceeds 
by  methods  of  induction  from  observed 
facts  to  necessary  conclusions,  so,  said 
Beecher,  the  theologian  must  come  into  the 
realm  of  Christian  facts,  discoverable  in  the 
great  body  of  Christian  experience,  and 
must  by  the  same  inductive  methods  argue 
from  these  facts  to  what  is  true  about  God 
and  what  is  true  about  man  and  duty. 

It  is  true  that  the  scientific  student  must 


130       BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

have  his  class-book,   must  study  his  class- 
book,  and  by  it  be  guided  where  to  look  for 
his  facts  and  how  to  treat  them  when  he 
finds    them.     And    so    we    have   our    text- 
book, this  Bible  of  God,  this  book  of  man, 
and  in  addition  to  it  we  have  our  volumes 
of  church  history,  and  we  have  our  histories 
of  Christian  doctrine  and  Christian  method. 
Yet  these  are  but   guides,   pointing    us   to 
where  we  shall  find  the  great  verifying  facts, 
and  teaching  us  how  to  deal  with  them,  and 
what  to  make  of  them  when  we  find  them. 
Do  you  tell  me  that  such  a  basis  for  the- 
ology is  uncertain  ?  that  the  experience  of 
one  man  may  differ  widely  from  the  experi- 
ence of  another  man  ?     That  is  true;   for  if 
out  of  mere  individual  experiences  we  were 
to  attempt  the  construction  of  a  theology, 
we    should    reach    conclusions  as  confused 
and  as  misleading  as  would  be  those  of  the 
scientist  if  he  attempted,  out  of  a  little  fact 
here  and  a  little  fact  yonder,  to  construct  a 
great  scientific  theory.     Our  induction  must 
be  from  all  the  facts.      My  experience  must 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND.    I3I 

be  attested  by  yours,  yours  and  mine  by 
that  of  a  great  company,  that  of  a  great 
company  to-day  by  that  of  a  great  company 
which  went  before  us.  When  so  attested 
and  so  confirmed,  it  will  be  found  that  the 
great  realities  of  religion  are  written  in  the 
hearts  and  souls  of  men;  and  that  through 
a  broad  induction  from  them  we  must  arrive 
at  our  beliefs  in  theology.  Mr.  Beecher's 
theology  was  not  made  up  out  of  books,  did 
not  constitute  itself  in  propositions ;  it  was 
the  living  interpretation  of  facts  which  he 
observed  and  of  experiences  which  he 
shared. 

And  so  it  comes  to  pass,  if  you  will 
allow  me  one  illustration,  that  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  put  before  the  church  a  doctrine 
of  the  Deity  of  Jesus  Christ,  which  to 
me  seems  absolutely  irrefutable.  He  did 
not  me  ely  gather  texts  strewn  here  and 
there  over  the  Biblical  page,  and  piece 
them  together,  and  say,  '^  This  book  tells 
me  that  he  was  God,  and  I  must  believe  it 
because   the   Book  says  it,"      No,  he  went 


132       BEE  CHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

back  into  his  own  experience,  into  the  ex- 
perience of  the  Christian  Church.  And 
what  did  he  find  ?  He  found  there  unmis- 
takably a  great  yearning  after  God,  a  yearn- 
ing so  deep  and.  persistent  that  only  one 
thing  could  be  concluded — that  God  put  it 
there,  and  put  it  there  as  a  ground  of  ex- 
pectation that  he  would  answer  the  craving 
he  had  created.  And  out  of  that  came 
clearly  and  necessarily  the  conclusion  that 
the  God  who  made  man  thus  to  need  and 
to  yearn  after  himself  must  answer  him, 
must  come  to  him,  or  cease  to  be  God — 
become  indeed  Diabolus,  not  to  be  wor- 
shiped, however  strong,  but  to  be  rejected 
and  repelled  as  one  who  made  the  soul  only 
to  mock  it  and  to  destroy  it  by  delusion  and 
despair.  Thus  it  was  that,  arguing  from 
Christian  experience,  Beecher  learned  that 
it  was  reasonable  and  obligatory  for  the  God 
who  made  man  to  come  to  him,  and  speak 
to  him,  and  work  for  him,  and  die  for  him. 
Then,  bringing  these  observations  and 
reasonings   to   the   light   of    the    Scriptural 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND,    1 33 

revelation,  and  looking  at  the  historic 
Christ  from  the  standpoint  of  human  crav- 
ings and  needs,  Beecher  could  not  escape 
thq,  conclusion  that  the  Christ  portrayed  in 
the  Gospels  was  God's  answer  to  man's 
necessity.  And  in  grateful  surprise  he 
cried:  **  Why,  this  is  God.  There  is  not  a 
single  thing  I  would  have  in  God  but  I  find 
in  Christ.  There  is  not  a  single  thing  in 
Christ  I  would  not  like  to  have  in  God. 
This  is,  this  must  be,  God.  I  worship  and 
I  adore." 

That  is  an  illustration  of  the  new  method 
in  theology,  largely  inaugurated  by  Henry 
Ward  Beecher.  Do  you  not  see  how  much 
more  powerful,  how  much  more  conclusive, 
it  is  ?  Take  any  number  of  texts  and 
prophecies  and  Messianic  hopes  written  here 
in  the  Book,  and  you  cannot  build  up  a 
theory  from  them  which  you  will  not  some- 
times doubt  and  sometimes  reject.  But 
build  up  your  theories  from  Christian  ex- 
perience, and  you  have  an  absolutely  invul- 
nerable castle  of  truth  in  which  to  live  and 


134       BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

breathe  and  work.  This,  then,  was  Beecher's 
second  contribution  to  modern  Christian 
thought — to  teach  us  where  to  find  the 
sources  of  our  theology. 

I  cannot  do  more  than  merely  indicate 
the  effects  which  flowed  from  these  two 
great  contentions  and  contributions.  Will 
you  note,  then,  in  passing,  that  this  method 
of  Beecher's  made  theology  an  intensely 
vital  and  interesting  study — the  most  vital 
and  .interesting  of  all  studies  ? 

When  I  was  a  youth  at  college,  the  most 
popular  thing  to  say  in  class  was  that  the 
study  of  theology  had  decayed,  and  that 
only  intellectual  fossils  engaged  themselves 
in  its  pursuit.  It  would  be  a  shame  un- 
speakable for  any  man  in  England  to  say 
that  to-day.  For  theology  has  become  the 
very  center  of  all  studies;  and  men  are 
turning  to  it  from  every  walk  in  life,  as  to 
that  which  most  satisfies,  most  repays,  most 
instructs.  And  the  secret  of  it  is  that  the 
theology  which  used  to  be  studied  was 
studied  from  books;   the  theology  that  has 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND,    135 

'  now  won  and  held  the  intellect  of  Christen- 
dom is  a  theology  studied  from  life. 

In  the  second  place,  this  method  supplied 
the  elements  of  certainty  in  religion.  It 
threw  men  back  upon  the  witness  which 
God  has  placed  within  themselves,  and  lifted 
them,  as  to  the  certainty  of  their  faith, 
above  the  reach  of  any  criticism  or  any  new 
development  of  thought.  In  England, 
except  in  few  and  inconsiderable  places,  it 
would  be  impossible  to-day  to  raise  any 
alarm,  to  create  any  heresy-hunt,  because  a 
man  brought  before  Christendom  some 
results  of  Biblical  criticism,  or  some  new 
interpretation  of  any  of  the  great  doctrines 
of  the  faith.  Why  ?  Because  men  have 
come  to  see  that  whether  Jonah  is  a  fact  or 
a  fiction  does  not  matter;  that  the  spiritual 
and  ethical  truth  in  the  story  is  the  thing 
of  importance;  that  whether  Moses  wrote 
the  Pentateuch  or  not  is  of  infinite  unim- 
portance, except  as  a  matter  of  literary 
interest,  so  long  as  the  great  unfolding  of 
the  Divine  Will  is  seen  to  be  unmistakable 


136       BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

and  divine;  and  because  men  have  come  to 
see  that  the  credibility  of  Christian  truth 
finds  warrant  in  the  heart  and  souls  of  men, 
and  not  in  the  mere  maintenance  of  historic 
propositions  and  theological  theories.  And 
so  it  has  come  to  pass  that  we  in  England — 
I  do  not  know  how  it  is  in  America — that 
we  in  England  live  very  calmly  amid  the 
busy  development  of  scientific  theory,  amid 
the  busier  activities  of  Biblical  criticism, 
amid  the  rearrangement  of  doctrinal  truth. 
We  are  very  calm,  because  we  know  that 
He  in  whom  we  live  and  trust  is  in  us  and 
with  us.  We  know  him.  We  do  not 
know  merely  about  him:  we  know  him. 
We  walk  with  him.  We  let  him  come 
into  the  heart.  There  is  glow,  there  is 
sunshine,  there  is  brightness,  there  is  hope, 
where  he  is.  And  so  we  say,  '^  Do  what 
you  will  with  the  mechanics  of  religion,  you 
cannot  take  him  away  from  us;  he  is 
crucified  in  us  afresh  every  day;  he  rises 
afresh  in  us  every  day;  and,  when  we  are 
willing,   he   sends   Pentecosts  of   glow  and 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND,    1 37 

power  into  our  expectant  souls.  We  knoiv 
him  because  we  have  him;  and  our  faith 
is  sure. " 

The   time  has   passed,   and  I    must   now 
content  myself  with    saying    in    conclusion 
that  I  have  laid  no  particular  stress  in  this 
review  upon  Beecher's  specific  contributions 
to  this  or  that  form  of  Christian  doctrine. 
I  have  done  more,  or  attempted  to  do  more: 
I  have  tried  to  show  that  he  has  influenced 
the  whole  spirit  of  theology  and  the  whole 
attitude    of    Christian    thought.       Calvin's 
name    is    identified    with    the    doctrine    of 
Sovereignty,  Luther's  with  the  doctrine  of 
Justification,  Wesley's  with  the  doctrine  of 
Sanctification.     You  will  never  be  able  to 
identify  the  name  of  Beecher  with  any  one 
single  doctrine.     But  this  we  do  in  England 
— this     I     trust    and    believe    you    do    in 
America:    we  feel    that   this    man    held   so 
much   of   God   in    him,    and   recognized    so 
clearly  the  grace  that  had  saved  him,  as  to 
bring    into    the   whole    realm    of    theologic 
thought  a  new  spirit,  a  new  outlook,  which 


138       BEE  CHER'S  INFLUENCE    UPON 

broke  down  ancient  superstitions,  and  made 
the  way  clear  for  men  to  work  in  new  con- 
structions, solid  and  beautiful,  of  Christian 
truth  and  Christian  hope.  His  was  the 
influence  of  leaven  in  the  meal.  Sometimes 
it  is  the  fate — shall  I  not  say  it  is  the  glory? 
— of  such  workers  as  he,  soon  to  be  lost  on 
the  page  of  history  as  a  mere  name,  and  to 
live,  as  he  often  longed  to  live  in  life, 
obscure,  unnoticed  of  men,  with  his  work 
for  his  joy  and  his  Master  for  his  reward. 
But  whether  the  name  of  Beecher  goes 
down  on  the  page  of  history  as  one  of  the 
creative  personalities  or  not,  of  this  I  am 
assured:  his  spirit  will  go  down,  and  it  will 
be  a  spirit  making  for  peace,  breadth, 
charity,  yea,  a  spirit  making  for  the  recog- 
nition of  Christ,  the  love  of  Christ,  the  sur- 
render of  the  heart  to  Christ,  and  issuing 
through  that  surrender  into  emancipation 
and  enlargement  of  thought,  of  service,  of 
personal  and  sacred  experience. 

Accept,  then,  my  friends,  these  fragmen- 
tary utterances  of  one  who  knew  and  loved 


RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT  IN  ENGLAND.    1 39 

your  pastor,  and  who  knew  and  loved  him 
well  enough  to  know  that,  as  he  is  here  with 
us  to-day,  he  is  well  content  at  the  absence 
of  mere  personal  eulogy,  and  at  the  exalta- 
tion of  those  great  truths  and  wise  methods 
for  which  he  pleaded.  Mr.  Beecher  is  gone 
from  you,  and  gone  from  the  world,  as  a 
corporeal  presence;  but  his  influence  still 
lives  and  operates  in  many  hearts  and  lands. 
Here  in  this  building,  where  the  echoes  of 
his  voice  still  linger,  that  influence  is 
obvious  and  potent.  Beyond  this  building, 
outreaching  even  the  expansive  coasts  of 
this  vast  continent,  that  influence  is  not  less 
effective  because  less  specifically  recogniz- 
able. He  lives,  here  where  he  was  known, 
beyond,  where  he  was  not  known,  in  the 
work  he  accomplished,  in  the  thoughts  he 
uttered,  in  the  spirit  he  breathed.  But  if 
he  is  to  continue  to  live,  it  must  be  through 
you,  and  through  us  who  caught  so  many 
inspirations  from  his  heart.  And  the  most 
permanent,  as  it  will  be  the  most  honoring, 
memorial  we  can  rear  to  him  will  be  to  obey 


140  BEECHER'S  INFLUENCE. 

as  well  as  learn  his  teaching,  and  to  trans- 
late into  renewed  and  sanctified  life  the 
credible  and  beautiful  Gospel  which  he 
preached  with  such  power  and  exhibited 
with  such  grace  during  forty  sacred  years  in 
this  house. 


Ube  UbcoloQical  iproblem  tot  Zo^Wa^. 

GEORGE  A.  GORDON. 


IV. 

Ube  XTbeologtcal  problem  tov  Uo*=2)as/ 

By  the  Rev.  GEORGE  A.  GORDON,  D.D., 
Of  Old  South  Congregational  Church,  Boston,  Mass. 

The  strange  thing  that  confronts  one 
almost  everywhere  to-day  is  the  absence  of 
theology  in  the  supreme  sense  of  that  word. 
For  all  thinking  men  who  are  in  any  meas- 
ure open  to  the  new  light  and  spirit  of  our 
time,  Calvinism  as  an  adequate  interpreta- 
tion of  the  ways  of  God  with  men,  or  even 
as  a  working  philosophy  in  life,  is  forever 
gone.  And  thus  far  nothing  equally  elab- 
orate and  commanding  has  arisen  to  take  its 
place.  There  has  been  a  great  negation  of 
one  theology,  without,  in  the  deepest  sense. 


*  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Thursday,  Novem- 
ber II,  1897. 

143 


144       THE    THEOLOGICAL  PROBLEM 

an  equally  great  affirmation  of  another. 
We  can  imagine  a  parallel.  We  can  imagine 
an  explosion  and  rejection  of  the  Ptolemaic 
system  of  astronomy  without  the  introduc- 
tion into  the  vacant  place  of  the  Coper- 
nican.  That  the  sun  and  planets  do  not 
revolve  round  the  earth  we  can  suppose 
that  men  have  become  absolutely  certain; 
that  this  little  globe  of  ours  is  not  the  center 
of  the  universe  is  clear;  that  what  are  called 
sunrise  and  sunset  are  but  appearances  can 
no  longer  be  doubted.  But  nothing  further 
is  settled.  No  map  of  the  heavens  to  re- 
place the  old  one  has  yet  been  made.  No 
scheme  of  the  real  center  and  movements  of 
the  planetary  system  has  yet  been  elabo- 
rated. Nothing  exists  but  single  thoughts, 
isolated  discoveries,  promising  insights  that 
so  far  have  not  been  wrought  over  into  one 
comprehensive  and  sovereign  conception. 
The  old  astronomy,  with  its  appeal  to  sense 
and  its  wonderful  hold  upon  the  popular 
imagination,  is  gone,  and  the  new,  in  any- 
thing like  scientific  shape,  has  not  arrived. 


FOR    TO-DAY.  145 

If  we  can  imagine  the  men  of  the  fifteenth 
century    as    having    lost    Ptolemy    without 
having  found  Copernicus,  we  shall   have  a 
parallel    for    the    condition    of    things    in 
theology  to-day.     In    proof   of    this  state- 
ment, I  ask  you  to  recall  the  chief  fields  of 
theological    interest    at    the    present    time. 
History,  criticism,  interpretation— of  these 
we  have  an    unprecedented    supply.     The 
annals  of  the  race,  literary  and  institutional, 
secular  and  religious,  have  been  read  with 
an  eagerness,  an  intelligence,  and  with  the 
application  of  scientific  methods  absolutely 
unparalleled.     The  text,   the  composition, 
the    times    and    environments    of    the    Old 
Testament   and    the    New    have    been    the 
subject    of    amazing   and    fruitful    activity. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  entire  history  of  the 
Christian   church.      And    antiquity   as    the 
source  of  beginnings  has  wielded  a  wonder- 
ful fascination   over  thousands  of  scholars. 
Upon  history,  criticism,  interpretation,  the 
representative   library  of    to-day   is   full   of 
new  books,  and  one  can  have  nothing  but 


146        THE    THEOLOGICAL   PROBLEM 

praise  for  the  splendid  achievement  em- 
bodied in  them.  The  limitation,  however, 
is  strikingly  obvious.  One  looks  almost 
in  vain  for  books  giving  an  elaboration 
into  coherent  and  commanding  form  of 
the  new  ideas  by  which  Christian  men  are 
living.  The  new  ideas  lie  in  our  life  with 
the  most  confusing  and  provoking  miscel- 
laneousness.  We  cry  out  for  order.  The 
house  of  faith  must  be  rebuilt;  and  for 
the  last  five  and  twenty  years  scholars  the 
world  over  have  done  nothing  but  collect 
materials.  David  was  allowed  to  make  a 
contribution  to  the  house  of  the  Lord  for 
his  time,  but  he  was  not  permitted  to  build 
it,  because  he  had  been  a  man  of  war  and 
had  shed  much  blood.  It  may  be  that  a 
similar  prohibition,  for  a  similar  reason,  has 
been  served  upon  the  critical  scholars  of  our 
time.  They  have  been  men  of  war;  they 
have  shed  much  blood;  and  if  they  should 
construct  an  edifice  for  faith,  perhaps  the 
generation  still  smarting  under  the  wounds 
it    has    received    might    refuse    to    enter. 


FOR    TO-DAY.  I47 

Others  may  think  that  the  parallel  to  these 
historical  scholars  is  Saul  and  not  David. 
It  is  because  of  compromise  with  an  evil 
system,  because  of  foolish  unwillingness  to 
shed  more  blood,  that  they  have  lost  their 
throne.  At  all  events,  the  house  of  faith 
remains  to  be  built.  We  have  materials  in 
abundance,  old  and  new,  but  the  building 
is  not  in  sight.  If  any  man  shall  say,  We 
need  none,  because  we  have  a  building  of 
God,  a  house  not  made  with  hands,  eternal 
in  the  heavens,  he  is  simply  mistaking  the 
eternal  pattern  in  the  Mount  for  the  taber- 
nacle below  that  it  is  still  incumbent  upon 
the  spiritual  intelligence  to  raise  for  the 
service  and  solace  of  all  the  journeying  chil- 
dren of  God.  Books  on  theology  proper, 
works  dealing  with  ideas  and  organizing 
them  into  a  great  and  commanding  whole, 
are  lamentably  few.  It  is  so  much  easier  to 
dig  than  to  construct,  to  be  intellectual  hod- 
carriers  than  to  be  architects  and  builders  of 
the  habitation  of  the  spirit. 

A  further  confirmation  of  this  contention 


148        THE    THEOLOGICAL  PROBLEM 

may  be  had  from  a  national  instance.     Five 
and  twenty  years  ago  Calvinism  was  domi- 
nant from  one  end  of  Scotland  to  the  other. 
To-day  it  is  dominant  nowhere;  it  has,  in- 
deed, been  utterly  outgrown  and  left  behind. 
What    has    effected    this    great     change  ? 
Chiefly  the  new   Biblical  scholarship,    and 
not  philosophical  thinking.     Professor  Dav- 
idson,  of    Edinburgh,   that    quiet,   shrewd, 
fascinating,  resistless  old  scholar  and  maker 
of  scholars,  is  behind  it  all.      His  greatest 
pupil,  W.  Robertson  Smith,  made  an  epoch 
in  the  national  life  of  Scotland  by  his  learn- 
ing, and  not  by  any  departure  from  Calvin- 
ism.     Others    have    risen    up    and    carried 
forward  the  work  that  he,    with   so   much 
ability  and  courage,  inaugurated.    Hundreds 
of  young  leaders  are  to-day  spreading  the 
light.     A  corresponding  movement  has  been 
running,  during  most  of  this  time,  in  New 
Testament  interpretation.      For  years  Pro- 
fessor   A.    B.    Bruce,    revered    as    a    great 
teacher  of  the  New  Testament,  as  much  in 
America  as  in  Great  Britain,  was  almost  a 


FOR    TO-DAY.  I49 

solitary  light.  Now  he  is  the  center  of  an 
ever-growing  brotherhood  of  like-minded 
men.  The  thing  to  be  noted  is  that  in  the 
accomplishment  of  this  wonderful  revolution 
in  the  belief  of  a  nation  very  little  purely 
theological  thinking  has  appeared.  The 
light  has  come  in  through  history,  criticism, 
exegesis;  the  old  scheme  has  been  expelled 
by  a  new  body  of  knowledge,  and  a  fresh 
mass  of  nobler  religious  feeling.  Still,  it 
must  be  said  that  in  Scotland  to-day  there 
is  really  no  philosophical  theology,  no  theory 
of  Christianity,  and  man's  religious  life 
worked  out  in  fundamental  opposition  to 
the  rejected  Calvinism.  Scotland  waits  for 
a  theology  to  fill  the  vacant  throne. 

The  same  thing  meets  us  at  home.  How 
many  diligent,  learned,  and  brilliant  work- 
men we  have  in  fields  that  pass  under  the 
general  name  of  theology  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  say.  Nor  would  it  be  possible 
to  do  them  too  much  honor.  All  our  theo- 
logical schools,  or  nearly  all,  are  centers  of 
fresh  and  fruitful  activity;  many  of  our  col- 


ISO       THE    THEOLOGICAL  PROBLEM 

leges  and  universities  are  in  touch  with  the 
same  spirit.  But  the  movement  has  hardly 
got  beyond  the  question  of  literature.  It  is 
the  work  of  the  scholar  rather  than  the 
thinker;  it  is  the  gathering  of  knowledge 
rather  than  the  organization  of  ideas.  No 
one  can  value  too  highly  these  preliminaries ; 
but  preliminaries  should  have  a  tendency  to 
become  finals,  tributaries  should  at  least 
move  onward  toward  the  main  stream,  the 
interests  of  the  scholar  should  merge  at 
length  in  the  greater  interest  of  the  thinker. 
And  although  untold  good  must  continue 
to  come,  in  many  ways  and  for  many  ends, 
from  Biblical  scholarship,  it  is  at  least 
questionable  if  we  have  not  already  reached 
the  permanent  conception  of  the  nature  and 
ofifice  of  the  Holy  Scriptures.  They  are 
simply  the  supreme  literature  of  the  religious 
life,  and  their  authority,  as  in  the  teachings 
of  Christ,  is  the  authority  of  the  highest  of 
their  kind.  Historical  criticism  is,  after  all, 
a  matter  of  environment;  the  content  of  the 
Bible,  the  word  of  God  there,  is  the  object 


FOR    TO-DAY.  15I 

of  the  enlightened  human  spirit.  We  need 
no  longer  delay  our  new  building  era  on 
account  of  the  Bible.  Its  hewn  stones  rest- 
ing upon  the  chief  corner-stone  a^e  already 
here  and  in  place. 

The  absence  of  a  theology  giving  intel- 
lectual form  and  justification  to  the  better 
sentiment  of  the  time  is  abundantly  visible 
in  our  ministry.  Among  almost  all  our 
effective  preachers  the  sympathies  are 
modern;  but  in  the  greater  number  the 
theology  is  either  ancient  or  non-existent. 
In  either  case,  the  mass  of  prevailing  emo- 
tion and  practical  activity  has  no  corre- 
sponding body  of  ideas  in  league  with  it. 
The  scheme  entertained  is  usually  some 
decrepit  modification  of  the  Calvinistic  kind, 
too  long  idle  for  effective  service,  with  the 
courage  but  without  the  capacity  for  battle; 
while  the  purposes,  sentiments,  and  practi- 
cal outlooks  are  all  of  this  new  and  greater 
day.  We  are  full  of  joy  so  long  as  we  are 
permitted  to  feel  with  these  brethren ;  but 
the    moment    we    hear    them    speak    their 


152        THE    THEOLOGICAL  PROBLEM 

philosophy,  our  bewilderment  is  like  that  of 
the  patriarch  of  old.  The  hands  are  the 
hands  of  Esau;  so  far,  so  good.  But  the 
voice  is  the  voice  of  Jacob:  here  comes  in 
the  endless  confusion.  How  often  does  one 
see  the  old  theology  unconsciously  dressing 
itself  up  in  the  garments  of  the  new,  with 
unreflecting  simplicity  covering  the  parts 
that  would  surely  betray  it,  and  advancing 
guilelessly  in  borrowed  enthusiasms  and 
simulated  loves  to  obtain  dominion  over  the 
blind  !  The  success  is  but  for  the  moment; 
the  old  supplanting  character  cannot  long 
be  concealed. 

Now,  the  chief  theological  necessity  for 
to-day  I  take  to  be  the  rebuilding  of  the 
edifice  of  Christian  belief.  We  need  a 
temple  for  the  intelligence.  We  need  fun- 
damental and  ruling  ideas  set  in  the  strength 
of  their  own  natural  order.  We  need  an 
intellectual  basis  for  the  new  faith,  passion, 
and  enterprise  of  the  Church  of  Christ  in 
our  time.  As  will  be  seen,  I  can  indicate 
but  a  single  line  of  thought  upon  this  vast 


FOR    TO-DAY,  153 

subject.  Christian  thinkers  are  under  bonds 
to  find  in  God  the  secure  foundation  for  all 
human  interests,  the  assurance  of  a  divine 
intention  and  grace  adequate  to  the  need 
and  capacity  of  mankind.  We  must  first 
of  all  command  the  point  where  the  life  of 
Christianity  itself  is  involved.  And  this  is 
the  point  whose  importance  the  entire  his- 
tory of  Plymouth  Church  illustrates,  in  sup- 
port of  which  it  has  stood  these  fifty  years, 
and  round  which  has  toiled,  with  prophetic 
insight,  magnificent  insistence,  and  benefi- 
cent results  to  the  whole  country,  the 
genius  both  of  its  first  minister  and  its 
second. 

I.  Calvinism  is  right  in  its  claim  that  the 
being  of  God  is  the  supreme  interest  both  in 
theology  and  life.  This  is  the  note  of 
greatness,  sounding  clearer  as  the  genera- 
tions pass,  in  the  thought  of  Augustine, 
Calvin,  and  Edwards.  Jonathan  Edwards, 
because  of  his  devouring  passion  for  God  as 
the  absolutely  perfect,  is  bright  with  an 
everlasting  light.     The   new  movement    in 


154        THE    THEOLOGICAL   PROBLEM 

theology,  conscious  as  it  is  of  revolutionary 
intent,  is  here  at  one  with  all  true  theology. 
It  aims  to  behold  all  things  in  God,  Its 
hope  is  to  begin,  continue,  and  end  in  God. 
Its  source  in  all  its  genuine  representatives 
is  the  aboriginal  necessity  of  the  human 
soul:  "  My  heart  and  my  flesh  cry  out  for 
the  living  God.*" 

But  Christian  thinkers  are  learning  that 
there  are  two  great  abuses  of  this  sublime 
passion.  Willingness  to  be  damned  for  the 
glory  of  God  may  be  the  sign  of  a  humble 
spirit;  but  it  is  in  reality  the  supreme  insult 
to  God.  For  it  assumes  that  the  glory  of 
God  and  the  weal  of  man  are  incompatible 
interests.  To  exalt  God  so  high  as  to 
banish  him  from  the  world  is  a  terrible 
error.  To  refuse  to  see  God  in  the  natural 
life  of  men  is  to  take  the  first  step  toward 
atheism.  For  a  God  wholly  above  the 
world- process,  wholly  apart  from  the  normal 
interests  of  men,  wholly  transcendent,  is 
practically  no  God  at  all.  In  Carlyle's 
phrase,   such  a  God  *'  does  nothing,"  and 


FOR    TO-DAY.  1 55 

for  human  beings  he  is  nothing.  This  is 
the  inevitable  outcome  of  the  belief  that 
makes  God  too  good  to  be  in  the  world, 
that  makes  the  world  too  wicked  to  have 
the  presence  of  God  in  it.  The  other 
abuse  is  one  peculiar  to  our  century.  It 
lies  in  identifying  God  with  the  develop- 
ment of  human  history,  in  refusing  to  see 
that  God  is  at  the  same  time  in  all  and  over 
all. 

Against    this    twofold     error   of    a    God 
wholly  above  the  world,   and  a  God  com- 
pletely one  with  its  process,  the  theology 
for  to-day  must  do  battle.     The  acorn  falls 
into  the  ground.     The  plan  of  the  tree  is 
there.     That  plan  lives  in  the   acorn,  and 
yet  transcends  it.      It  bursts  the  acorn   in 
the  soil,  runs  it  out  into  new  and  wondrous 
forms,  drives  it  up  through  the  earth,  sends 
it  higher  and  higher,  and  through  the  disci- 
pline of  a  thousand  years  it  struggles  to  live 
more  and  more  in  the  tree.     And  when  the 
tree  has  come  to  its  best;  when  it  is  deepest 
in  the  earth,  highest  in  the  air,  and  widest 


15^        THE    THEOLOGICAL  PROBLEM 

in  the  sweep  of  its  great  arms,  the  ideal  of 
the  tree  still  looks  beyond.     The  wondrous 
product  still  falls  short  of  perfection,   and 
therefore  the  plan  is  still  a  beautiful  excess 
even  upon  the  tree  at  its  best.     This  is  the 
Christian  idea  of  God.      He  is  in  the  organ- 
ism of  humanity  from  the  first.     It  is  he 
that  sends  the  race  into  all  its  growths.      It 
is  he  that  gives  man  ideals,  and  that  fills  his 
heart  with  achieving  power.     It  is  he  that 
brings  men  into  families  that  grow  sweeter 
with  the   centuries;  that  sets  these  families 
in  nations  that  slowly  ascend  in  character; 
that  moves  the  nations  into  wider  federa- 
tions  of  trade    and   art   and   science;    that 
lights  up  the  future  with  the  dream  of  uni- 
versal brotherhood ;  that  compels  the  race 
to  leave  more  and  more  of  its  brutehood 
behind  it ;  and  that,  with  a  sublime  insist- 
ence, urges  it  on  upon  the  full  realization  of 
its  humanity.     We  have  an  indwelling  God, 
a  God  whose  indwelling  is  the  fountain  of 
our  whole   character   and    hope.      But   we 
have  a  God  above  and  beyond  the  process 


FOR    TO-DAY,  1 57 

of  human  society,  a  God  whose  character  is 
an  eternal  excess  upon  human  history,  a 
God  who  can  never  live  wholly  in  man 
because  he  is  so  infinitely  great  in  wisdom 
and  love  for  man.  God  lives  eternally  in 
his  own  plan,  in  his  own  ideal,  in  his  own 
love.  He  lives  for  himself  because  he  repre- 
sents in  himself  the  inconceivable  good  in 
reserve  for  mankind.  Thus  we  must  strive 
to  combine  in  our  thought  of  God  the 
primary  truth  in  Calvinism — the  infinite  ex- 
altation of  God,  and  the  fundamental  in- 
sight of  our  century — God's  presence  in  all 
human  history. 

2.  I  have  said  that  Calvinism  is  pro- 
foundly right  in  concentrating  human  in- 
terest upon  God.  It  is  right  in  its  funda- 
mental contention  concerning  God.  The 
final  thing  in  the  universe  is  the  Divine 
Will.  Calvinism  is  wrong,  grievously  wrong 
in  the  character  that  it  ascribes  to  that 
ultimate  Will.  If  that  Will  be  against  the 
greater  part  of  mankind,  as  Calvinism  de- 
clares,   nothing    can    long    keep    us    from 


158        THE    THEOLOGICAL  PROBLEM 

despair;  but  if  that  Will  be  for  us,  as  a  true 
theology  must  contend,  who  can  be  against 
us?  The  fundamental  position  of  the  tradi- 
tional theology  does  not  admit  a  God  for 
mankind.  The  new  superstructure  of  senti- 
ment cannot  stand  upon  the  old  theological 
basis.  The  scheme  of  salvation  which  has, 
with  a  few  noble  exceptions,  prevailed  in 
the  Church  from  the  days  of  Augustine  to 
the  present  time,  the  theory  against  which 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  revolted,  and  which 
he  fought  with  the  power  of  a  world-shaker, 
never  dreamed  of  God  as  seriously  caring  for 
all  mankind.  There  was  antiquity,  but 
only  the  Hebrew  people  were  of  concern  to 
God.  A  few  great  souls  might  possibly  be 
recovered  from  the  general  wreck,  like 
Cyrus  and  Socrates,  Plato  and  Plutarch, 
Epictetus  and  Marcus  Aurelius;  but,  as  a 
whole,  antiquity  did  not  lie  in  the  gracious 
purpose  of  God.  It  had  died  to  him  in 
Adam,  and  he  had  not  even  cared  to  try  to 
make  it  live  to  him  in  Christ.  There  were 
the    nations     contemporaneous    with     the 


FOR    TO-DAY,  1 59 

Christian  Church  in  its  development.    They 
were  material  from  which  a  selection  was 
made;   but   as  nations,  as   communities  of 
human  beings,  they  were  not  included  in 
God's  moral  regard  for  the  world.     There 
were  the  heathen  peoples,  the  belated  rear- 
guard  of  mankind,    the   millions  who   had 
been    obstructed    in    the    onward    march, 
detained  in  the  swamps  fighting  the  beast  in 
its  earlier  and  uglier    forms.     In  the  dust 
and  heat  of  this  modern  day  they  began  to 
roll  in  sight.     What  was  to  be  thought  con- 
cerning them?    Again  the  same  scheme  was 
applied.     Their  entire  past  was  regarded  as 
Godless;   the  myriads  of  their  predecessors, 
those  whom    these    races    looked    upon    as 
heroic   and    pious   ancestors,    had   gone   ir- 
revocably  to   their   doom.      These   peoples 
themselves   are   but  fresh  material  for  the 
selective     purpose    of    the    Highest;      and 
through  the  message  of   the  missionary  he 
will  choose  whom  he  will,  and  reject  whom 
he  will.     The  old  theology  had  two  super- 
lative  merits;    it  was  honest,    and    it  was 


l6o       THE    THEOLOGICAL  PROBLEM 

courageous.  It  did  not  try  to  appear  other 
than  the  terrible  partialism  that  it  was.  It 
did  not  shrink  from  the  avowal  of  its  own 
logic. 

That  is  the  scheme  which  has  fallen  from 
the  control  of  the  Church,  and  to  whose 
vacant  throne  no  contrasted  conception  of 
equal  thoroughness  and  vigor  has  yet  come. 
And  it  is  precisely  this  ultimate  origin  of 
the  new  theology  to  which  I  would  turn 
attention.  The  new  scheme  is  not  founded 
upon  sentiment;  it  is  not  the  product  of 
benevolent  dreamers;  it  is  not  held  blindly 
in  spite  of  human  nature,  the  movement  of 
history,  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament, 
the  order  of  the  moral  world,  the  heart  of 
the  universe.  The  old  scheme  was  great  in 
its  confidence  that  the  facts  were  on  its  side 
and  against  the  nobler  view.  Nothing  could 
be  further  from  the  truth.  The  older 
theology  saw  the  sternness  of  life,  but  it  did 
not  understand  Paul's  exclamation,  ''Behold 
the  goodness  and  the  severity  of  God!" 
Its  hopeless  outlook  upon  the  world  was  due 


FOR    TO-DAY.  l6l 

to  limitation  of  vision.  As  Phillips  Brooks 
has  taught  us  in  one  of  his  noblest  sermons, 
it  is  easy  to  curse  life  if  only  a  part  is  seen. 
Balak  was  shrewd  enough  to  see  that  if 
Balaam  was  to  find  himself  able  to  curse 
Israel,  he  must  look  upon  the  part,  the 
utmost  part,  the  wretchedest  part,  and  not 
upon  the  magnificent  whole. 

3.  The  theology  for  to-day  must  found 
itself  upon  the  will  of  God,  and  upon  the 
will  of  God  at  its  highest.  When  we  look 
for  God  in  the  cosmic  order,  we  can  do  little 
until  we  find  man  there.  Man,  as  the 
crown  of  the  cosmic  process,  shows  that 
process  at  its  best,  shows  what  lies  behind 
it  all.  When  we  look  for  God  in  man,  we 
do  little  until  we  find  Christ,  the  Ideal  Man. 
In  Christ  man  the  creature  is  at  his  best, 
and  God  the  Creator  is  at  his  best.  The 
incarnation  is  the  center  of  all  sane  theology. 
Man  at  his  best  can  alone  give  us  God  at 
his  best.  To  this  issue  the  supreme  divinity 
of  Christ  comes.  Jesus  took  the  Infinite  at 
his  best ;  that  is,  he  took  God  as  he  was  in 


1 62        THE    THEOLOGICAL   PROBLEM 

his  Son.  Unless  we  look  at  his  model,  the 
genius  of  the  architect  can  be  known  only 
from  his  building;  and  his  character  will 
share  in  the  confusion  of  the  process.  Un- 
less we  look  at  Christ,  the  typal  man,  we 
can  judge  the  Maker  of  our  human  world 
only  by  what  we  see.  And  only  when  God 
shall  have  made  the  pile  complete  can  our 
judgment  be  final.  Therefore  we  build 
upon  Christ  as  the  sublime  anticipation  of 
perfected  humanity,  as  the  archetypal  man 
standing  complete  in  the  confusion  of  the 
great  historic  construction,  and  giving  us 
through  man  at  his  best  God  at  his  best. 
We  must  therefore  revise  all  other  revela- 
tions of  God  in  nature,  in  the  constitution 
of  man,  in  human  history,  and  in  the  Holy 
Scriptures  themselves,  by  the  light  that  falls 
from  the  glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Nothing  must  be  allowed  to  con- 
tradict the  essential  meaning  of  the  Incarna- 
tion. It  stands  for  the  eternal  goodness  of 
God  in  the  inexpressible  sternness  of  the 
process  of    history.     If  the  Incarnation    is 


FOR    TO- DA  V.  163 

not  to  be  lost  from  faith,  if  the  mission  of 
Christ  is  not  to  be  reduced  to  a  delusion,  if 
Christianity  is  not  to  be  contracted  into  the 
religion  of  a  sect,  the  saving  purpose  of  God 
in  Christ  must  be  made  to  cover  the  race. 

It  is  true  that  this  principle  is  revolu- 
tionary. The  affirmation  that  God  has  a 
Christian  purpose  toward  our  entire  human- 
ity involves  an  extension  of  the  field  of 
redemption  so  enormous  as  to  make  obso- 
lete, at  a  single  stroke,  the  whole  theological 
map  of  the  traditional  view.  And  what 
seems  worse,  while  all  clear-seeing  men  are 
aware  that  this  does  not  necessarily  imply 
universal  salvation,  it  is  true  that  it  looks 
that  way.  1/  God  shall  succeed^  universal 
salvation  will  be  the  final  result.  And  this 
sounds  so  perilous  to  good  morals,  and 
seems  to  cut  the  nerve  of  all  strenuous 
endeavor!  O  my  brothers,  when  will 
Christian  thinkers  fear  atheism  more  than 
universalism,  when  will  they  see  that  the 
deepest  immorality  lies  in  distrust  of  the 
righteous  will  of  God,  when  will  they  awake 


164        THE    THEOLOGICAL   PROBLEM 

to  the  fact  that  only  those  who  believe  in  a 
God  for  humanity  and  eternally  for  human- 
ity can  resist  unto  blood !  Any  scheme 
that  puts  God  with  an  inclusive  and  ever- 
lasting purpose  of  redemption  behind  man- 
kind, looks  like  universalism ;  but  let  us 
remember  that  any  other  scheme  is,  in  our 
time,  a  royal  road  to  atheism.  When  we 
assert,  as  we  do  so  easily,  the  brotherhood 
of  man,  let  us  be  sure  that  the  universe, 
according  to  our  view,  is  not  against  it;  let 
us  be  sure  that  there  is  in  God  a  universal 
fatherhood  upon  which  to  found  it. 

4.  One  more  specification  must  be  made. 
Where  in  the  new  scheme  of  theological 
thought  does  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  come  in?  About  no  other  truth 
of  the  Christian  faith  is  there,  among  good 
people,  so  much  serious  and  profound  con- 
viction and  so  much  vagueness.  Still  every 
Christian  heart  knows  when  its  treasure  is 
rightly  named.  It  knovv^s  when  the  point  is 
met  and  when  it  is  missed.  It  will  not 
accept  a  stone  for  bread,  nor  a  scorpion  for 


FOR    TO-DAY.  165 

an    ^'gg.      The    philosophical    idea   of   the 
immanence  of  God  is  not  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  th«  Holy  Spirit.     The  life  of  God 
in  the  souls  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  in 
the    hearts    of   the    outside   saints,    as   Dr. 
Bushnell  calls  them,  the  divine  indwelling 
represented  by  the   ethnic  religions  at  their 
best,  or  by  the  Hebrew  faith  at  its  highest, 
is  not  what   the   disciple  of  Christ   means 
when  he  speaks  of  the  Holy  Spirit.     There 
is  indeed  a  profound    identity  in   the  two 
experiences,  but  there  is  a  difference  equally 
profound.     God  is  the  same  God,  and  yet 
the  Christian  revelation  brings  to  light  the 
hidden    character  of   God.     The    Christian 
conception  of  God  as  the  God  and  Father 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  so  ineffably  great 
that  God  looks  through  it  upon  the  believer, 
and  comes  through  it  in  upon  the  heart  of 
the  individual  and  the  Church  in  ways  and 
measures  and  powers  altogether  new. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the 
coming  of  the  life  of  the  God  and  Father  of 
Jesus   Christ.     God  as  he  comes   through 


l66       THE    THEOLOGICAL   PROBLEM 

the  historic  Christ,  as  he  finds  the  form  of 
his  coming  in  Christ,  as  he  is  seen  and  felt 
and  experienced  through  Christ,  is  the  Holy 
Spirit  of  our  faith.  The  Christian  idea  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  is  inseparable  from  the 
Christian  thought  of  Christ.  A  supreme 
historic  character  reveals  the  ineffable  love 
of  God,  and  continues  the  everlasting  form 
of  God  for  the  Christian  mind,  the  channel 
along  which  God  evermore  comes  to  the 
Christian  heart,  the  atmosphere  through 
which  God  in  his  light  and  grace  comes  and 
lives  in  the  Christian  life. 

It  is  indeed  the  Christian  God  who  made 
the  heavens  and  the  earth,  who  made  our 
world  the  abode  of  life,  who  filled  life  with 
ceaseless  aspiration  and  endowed  it  with 
the  force  that  through  ascending  forms 
seeks  its  consummation  in  man.  It  is  the 
Christian  God  who  made  all  men  of  one 
blood,  who  left  no  people  altogether  with- 
out witness  of  himself,  who  through  lower 
religions  and  higher  has  spoken  to  the 
human  soul,  who  has  given   man  a  moral 


FOR    TO-DAY,  167 

nature,  an  ideal  of  fellowship  in  the  family 
and  in  the  total  interests  of  existence,  who 
has  constituted  our  humanity  in  his  own 
image,  smitten  it  with  an  immortal  hunger 
for  himself,  and  moved  upon  it  from  the 
beginning  in  the  tides  of  his  love.  It  is  the 
Christian  God  who  has  made  our  human 
world  and  the  universe  in  which  it  is  set; 
but  men  did  not  know  it  and  could  not 
know  it  until  Christ  came.  The  immanent 
God  is  known  in  Christ  as  our  Father;  but 
not  until  he  is  thus  known  can  we  date  the 
coming  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  Pentecos- 
tal vision  of  God,  and  life  and  power  under 
God,  were  mediated  by  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  Because  he  is  the  final  and  perfect 
mediator  of  God,  we  know  God  as  the  Holy 
Spirit.  Therefore  is  the  Holy  Spirit  the 
Christian  Indweller,  the  Christian  Com- 
forter. He  is  the  light  of  the  Christian 
intelligence,  the  strength  of  the  Christian 
will,  the  rapture  of  the  Christian  heart,  the 
Ineffable  in  the  Christian  life.  He  is  the 
reserve  of  God  bestowed  alone  upon  those 


l68       THE   THEOLOGICAL  PROBLEM 

who    look    to    him    through    our    Master, 
Christ. 

Here,  then,  is  the  issue  of  all  that  I  have 
said  to-night.  I  have  insisted  upon  a  meta- 
physical insight,  an  ethical  faith,  a  historical 
fact,  and  a  supreme  experience.  I  have 
contended  for  the  insight  that  finds  a  God 
in  all  and  over  all ;  for  the  faith  that  holds 
to  the  absolute  goodness  of  the  Infinite 
Will;  for  the  historical  fact  that  becomes 
the  supreme  interpretation  both  of  the 
Divine  intention  and  human  capacity;  and 
for  the  exalted  experience  in  which  all  truth 
finds  its  field  and  power.  Immanence  and 
transcendence  must  meet  in  the  nature  of 
the  Ineffable  God,  the  righteousness  of  God 
must  come  to  sovereign  expression  in  the 
Incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God,  and  the 
prophetic  character  of  the  Incarnation  must 
advance  toward  fulfillment  in  the  Christian 
life.  The  metaphysical  insight  must  issue 
in  the  ethical  faith,  both  insight  and  faith 
must  find  verification  in  the  history  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  upon  this  must  begin  the  dis- 


FOR    TO -DA  Y.  1 69 

pensation  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  perpetual 
coming  of  the  Christian  God  in  the  Hfe  of 
mankind. 

For  the  individual  the  message  from  the 
theology  here  indicated  is  that  salvation  is 
righteousness.     Whatever  truth  there  may 
be  in  the  ideas  of  imputation,  substitution, 
vicarious  sacrifice — and  I  am  glad  to  be  able 
to  see  a  world  of  noble  meaning  in  them — 
they  do  not  in  any  way  conflict  with  the 
fact  that  righteous  character,  and  nothing 
else,    is    salvation;    that    character    is    the 
achievement  of  the  personal  will ;  that  it  can 
be  won,  in  the  deepest  sense,   only  by  the 
soul    for    itself;    that    God    himself    cannot 
bestow  it   except   through   the    agony  and 
bloody  sweat    of   the    human    spirit.     The 
path  of  eternal  life  is  the  path  of  anguish; 
tears  are  its  meat  day  and  night  while  it 
hears  the  world  cry,  ''Where  is  thy  God?  " 
The  stress  of  heart  in  the  soul  that  is  gain- 
ing new  standing  in  the  truth,  winning  new 
interests  in  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  mak- 
ing new  advances  upon  righteousness  cannot 


170        THE    THEOLOGICAL   PROBLEM 

be  put  into  words.  There  are  none  but 
heroic  feet  upon  that  stairway  of  fire. 
Idlers  and  pretenders,  soft  and  luxurious 
lives,  have  no  place  in  that  awful  but  blessed 
process.  Salvation  for  the  moral  shirk, 
while  he  remains  a  shirk,  God  in  his  mercy 
has  made  forever  impossible. 

But  this  is  not  the  final  word.  To  the 
question  shot  upward  from  the  hearts  of  the 
brave  in  the  strenuousness  and  seeming 
impossibility  of  the  righteous  life,  Is  God 
for  us  or  against  us?  there  must  be  but  one 
answer.  We  must  not  make  God  responsi- 
ble for  the  continuance  of  iniquity.  We 
must  define  sin  as  resistance  to  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  righteous  purpose  of  God  in  the 
soul.  God  is  against  the  race  only  when  it 
is  against  itself;  and  in  that  case  his  wrath 
is  his  mercy.  God  is  on  the  side  of  every 
man  who  sets  his  heart  on  righteousness. 
The  deepest  in  human  nature,  in  human 
society,  in  human  history,  in  the  course  of 
the  world,  in  the  on-going  universe,  makes 
for   the   seeker   after   righteousness,      The 


FOR    TO-DAY,  I/I 

stars  in  their  courses  fight  for  the  man  who 
contends  for  a  pure  heart ;  and  to  every  soul 
face  to  face  with  the  tremendousness  of  the 
moral  process  the  sublime  comfort  comes, 
"The  Eternal  God  is  thy  refuge,  and  under- 
neath are  the  everlasting  arms." 


Ube  Social  problems  of  tbe  ff uture. 

WASHINGTON   GLADDEN. 


V. 

Ubc  Social  iproblems  ot  tbe  ffitture. 

By  the  Rev.  WASHINGTON  GLADDEN,  D.D.,» 
Of  First  Congregational  Church,  Columbus,  O. 

I  BRING  to  you  to-night,  my  friends  of 
Plymouth  Church,  no  better  offering  than 
that  which  can  be  expressed  in  the  pulsa- 
tions of  a  heart  that  beats  in  unison  with 
yours  as  you  recall  the  toils  and  the  gains, 
the  battles  and  the  victories,  of  the  last  fifty 
years.  In  all  the  larger  life  of  this  memo- 
rable era  this  church  has  borne  a  worthy 
part.  The  prudent  man  hesitates  to  com- 
pare the  efficiency  of  moral  causes,  or  to 
employ  superlatives  in  estimating  the  forces 
that  work  for  righteousness;  but  I  shall  risk 

'  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Thursday,  Novem- 
ber II,  1897. 

175 


176  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

nothing  in  saying  that  we  are  standing  in 
a  place  from  which  light  and  power  have 
radiated  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  In  shap- 
ing the  thought  of  this  Nation  and  in 
leavening  its  life,  Plymouth  Church  has 
been  and  is  one  of  the  potent  influences. 
It  is  impossible  for  you  to  recall  and  re- 
count, as  you  have  been  doing  for  the  last 
few  days,  the  history  of  the  last  fifty  years, 
without  deep  and  solemn  thankfulness  to 
God  for  the  tasks  which  he  has  put  upon 
this  church,  and  the  work  that  he  has 
wrought  by  means  of  it. 

If  Plymouth  Church  has  stood  for  one 
thing  more  clearly  than  for  anything  else,  it 
has  been  the  idea  that  Christianity  gives 
the  law  to  the  whole  of  life ;  that  it  must 
control  our  business,  our  politics,  our  pleas- 
ures; that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord  of  capital 
and  counting-room,  of  factory  and  studio, 
of  school  and  home.  It  was  this  resolute 
purpose  to  apply  the  Christian  law  to  all  our 
social  relations  that  made  the  Plymouth 
pulpit  the  power  that  it  was  in  the  great 


OF  THE  FUl'URE,  1 77 

conflict  which  issued  in  the  war  and  the 
emancipation  of  the  slaves.  How  strange 
and  far  away  seems  the  day  when  this  testi- 
mony began  to  be  uttered  in  Plymouth 
Church — not  here  alone,  but  here  more 
clearly  and  convincingly  than  almost  any- 
where else.  It  was  not  the  popular  thing 
to  say  in  those  days;  men  who  were  looking 
for  promotion  found  something  else  to  talk 
about.  To  insist  that  the  slave  was  our 
brother,  and  that  we  had  no  right  to  make 
merchandise  of  him,  was  an  offense  against 
all  decencies  and  proprieties.  Well  do  I 
remember  a  prayer  in  the  church  which  was 
nurse  of  my  childish  faith,  a  prayer  wherein 
the  young  minister  made  bold  to  pray  "for 
our  brethren  in  bonds  as  bound  with 
them;"  and  how  the  faces  of  the  elders 
reddened  with  indignation  because  politics 
had  been  brought  into  their  pulpit!  That 
minister  went ;  he  was  not  allowed  to  stand 
upon  the  order  of  his  going.  And  the  same 
temper  quite  generally  prevailed.  To  insist 
upon  the  clear  declaration  of  the  doctrine 


178  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

that  God  is  the  Father  of  all  men  was  to 
expose  yourself  to  accusations  of  sensation- 
alism and  sedition  and  even  of  heresy.  It 
was  clearly  proved,  from  some  influential 
pulpits,  that  abolitionism  and  infidelity 
were  one  and  the  same  thing.  That  was 
the  kind  of  Christianity  that  Plymouth  pul- 
pit had  to  meet  and  fight;  and  there  was  no 
faltering.  These  walls  began  to  echo  with 
words  of  power  that  stirred  the  conscience 
and  the  manhood  of  the  whole  Nation.  If 
they  could  only  give  back  to  us  to-night  a 
few  of  the  trumpet-calls  with  which  they 
have  resounded! 

I  remember  well — it  is  not  possible  that 
I  should  ever  forget — what  seemed  to  me 
the  culmination  of  this  mighty  testimony,  in 
the  Thanksgiving  sermon  preached  here 
thirty-seven  years  ago  this  month  —  in 
November,  i860,  immediately  after  the 
election  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  The  Legis- 
lature of  South  Carolina  had  already  called 
a  convention  to  dissolve  the  Union,  and  the 
air  was  full  of  the  mutterings  of  secession. 


OF  THE  FUTURE.  179 

The  house  was  crowded.  And  what  a 
reaffirmation  we  heard  that  day  of  the  great 
truth  of  human  brotherhood,  of  which  these 
political  movements  were  the  passionate 
repudiation!  I  sat  up  there,  in  that  left- 
hand  gallery,  against  the  wall,  and  listened 
to  what  I  have  always  felt  was  the  most 
tremendous  speech  I  ever  heard.  How  the 
house  rocked  and  swayed  with  the  glorious 
passion  !  There  were  thunderings  and  light- 
ning and  voices;  there  were  hailstones  and 
coals  of  fire.  **I  would  die  myself,**  cried 
the  prophet,  "cheerfully  and  easily,  before 
a  man  should  be  taken  out  of  my  hands 
when  I  had  the  power  to  give  him  liberty 
and  the  hound  was  after  him  for  his  blood. 
I  would  stand  as  an  altar  of  expiation 
between  slavery  and  liberty,  knowing  that, 
through  my  example,  a  million  men  would 
live.  A  heroic  deed,  in  which  one  yields 
up  his  life  for  others,  is  his  Calvary.  It  was 
the  hanging  of  Christ  on  the  hill-top  that 
made  it  the  highest  mountain  on  the 
globe. 


>  > 


l80  THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEMS 

And  then  again:  *'I  stand  to  declare  that 
justice  is  worth  more  than  all  the  corn-fields 
of  the  continent.  I  stand  to  declare  that 
right  between  man  and  man  is  worth  more 
than  all  the  freights  of  all  the  ships  that 
whiten  the  sea.  I  stand  to  declare  that 
there  is  not  in  the  king's  crown,  nor  in  the 
scepter  of  any  monarch,  such  a  power  as 
there  is  in  simple  mercy  between  human 
beings.  I  stand  to  declare  that  the  secret 
of  national  compactness  is  in  national  con- 
science, national  affection,  and  national  faith 
in  moral  ideas.  And  I  stand  to  declare 
that  the  period  in  which  men  scoff  at  moral 
laws  and  moral  truths  is  a  period  of  rank 
infidelity  and  utter  apostasy.  The  form  of 
religion  may  stand  in  such  a  period,  but  it 
will  be  worm-eaten;  it  will  be  dead;  it  will 
be  rotten.  And  if  you  want  to  know  which 
way  nations  are  to  go  to  find  prosperity,  let 
me  tell  you  that  every  nation  that  means  to 
be  prospered  must  steer  straight  to  the 
lighthouse  of  God's  universe.  And  what  is 
that?    God's  heart.    Any  nation  that  steers 


OF   THE  FUTURE.  l8l 

for  any  other  thing  will  run  upon  rocks  and 
shoals. '  * 

Such  were  the  great  deliverances  of  that 
memorable  day.  Such  has  always  been  the 
testimony  of  Plymouth  Church;  thank  God 
that  it  is  as  clear  and  strong  to-day  as  ever 
it  was!  When,  therefore,  Plymouth  Church 
summons  me  to  speak  of  the  social  ques- 
tions of  the  future,  it  is  not  requiring  of  me 
a  kind  of  speech  that  is  novel  to  this  plat- 
form. The  religion  of  this  church  has 
always  been  vitally  related  to  the  social  life 
of  the  people.  Nor  is  it  needful  that  I 
should  go  in  search  of  any  new  message. 
The  one  great  truth  of  the  brotherhood  of 
man  is  the  substance  of  all  I  have  to  say. 
Nobody  can  say  it  more  strongly  than  your 
pastor  has  said  it:  '* All  our  national  prob- 
lems are  problems  of  human  brotherhood." 

You  have  asked  me  to  speak  of  social 
questions;  there  is  but  one  social  question, 
and  that  is  the  question  whether, 

'*  Man  to  man,  the  world  o'er, 
Shall  brithers  be,  and  a'  that." 


1 82  THE   SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

Just  as  soon  as  men  are  ready  to  answer 
that  question  heartily,  in  the  affirmative 
sense,  our  social  problems  will  disappear  as 
easily  as  the  August  sun  absorbs  the  morn- 
ing mist.  To  recognize  this  relation  of 
brotherhood  as  existing  between  all  human 
beings,  and  to  accept  the  truth  that  every 
human  institution,  every  law,  every  form  of 
social  organization,  must  conform  to  this 
fundamental  fact,  is  to  find  the  true  and 
complete  solution  of  all  the  questions  that 
disturb  our  peace. 

Take,  for  example,  the  question  of  taxa- 
tion. In  some  of  its  forms  this  question  has 
been  worn  threadbare  by  discussion;  in 
other  of  its  aspects  not  nearly  so  much  has 
been  said  about  it  as  needs  to  be  said. 
Beyond  doubt  a  large  share  of  the  evils 
under  which  we  are  suffering  to-day  arise 
from  inequitable  taxation.  The  great  ma- 
jority of  good  citizens  have  come  to  look 
upon  the  tax-gatherer  as  a  disturber  of  their 
complacency,  and  upon  the  levies  which  he 
makes  as  something  in  the  nature  of  extor- 


OF   THE  FUTURE.  1 83 

tion.     And,   as   things   now   are,    there    is 
some  justification   for    this    feeling  on  the 
part  of  honest  men;    for  there  can  be    no 
doubt  that,  even  when  direct  taxes  are  con- 
sidered, the  honest  man  bears  far  more  than 
his  fair  share  of  the  burdens  of    society. 
What  it  costs  to  be  honest  is  brought  home 
to  every  man  who  goes  to  the  treasurer's 
office  for  his  tax-bill.      My  own  opinion  is 
that   we   have   some   systems   of   taxation 
which  are  calculated — not  perhaps  intended 
— to    put   the   heaviest    burdens  on    those 
least  able  to  bear  them.     And  it  is  certain 
that  even  under  the  system  of  direct  taxa- 
tion the  strong  and  shrewd  do  contrive  to 
evade  a  large  part  of  their  proper  contribu- 
tion,  and  that  the  conscientious  are  com- 
pelled to  suffer  for  the  sins  of  the  unscrupu- 
lous.     This    state    of   things   is    becoming 
intolerable  and  even  ominous;  dangers  to 
the    peace   of   society   are   arising    in    this 
quarter  whose  seriousness  is  not  likely  to  be 
overstated. 

What,  now,  is  the  cause  of  all  this?    It  is 


1 84  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

nothing  else  but  the  refusal  to  accept  the 
simple  fact  of  human  brotherhood,  and  to 
live  in  true  brotherly  relations.  These 
schemes  by  which  some  classes  are  burdened 
for  the  aggrandizement  of  others  are  in  con- 
tempt of  the  law  of  brotherhood.  These 
strong  and  shrewd  citizens  who  contrive  to 
pay  less  than  their  share  of  the  cost  of 
government,  knowing  well  that  others  must 
therefore  pay  more  than  their  share,  are 
not  acting  the  part  of  brothers.  This  in- 
fraction of  the  law  of  Christ,  which  is  the 
fundamental  law  of  all  sound  democratic 
society,  is  just  as  real  as  is  that  of  the  slave- 
holder. The  fact  that  it  is  less  obvious  and 
flagrant,  that  it  is  more  easily  concealed, 
does  not  diminish  its  danger  to  character  or 
to  the  social  order.  It  is  out  of  these 
hidden  injustices  that  the  worst  mischiefs  of 
society  arise. 

I  have  said  that  a  great  many  good  citi- 
zens always  make  this  enforced  contribution 
to  the  common  welfare  somewhat  unwill- 
ingly.    But  if   all  men  were   brothers   in- 


OF  THE  FUTURE.  1 85 

deed,  and,  instead  of  seeking  to  shirk  their 
burdens  and  put  them  on  the  shoulders  of 
others,  were  trying  to  bear  one  another's 
burdens,  this  would  be  the  one  expenditure 
which  we  should  make  most  cheerfully. 
For,  to  say  nothing  of  our  consciousness 
that  we  were  thus  ministering  to  the  com- 
mon good,  we  should  also  have  the  assur- 
ance that  larger  returns  would  come  to 
ourselves  from  this  outgo  than  from  any 
other  possible  investment.  If  the  money 
paid  into  the  public  treasury  were  honestly 
and  intelligently  used  for  the  public  welfare, 
we  should  receive  greater  benefit  from  it 
than  from  the  same  amount  employed  in 
any  private  enterprise.  "No  money  we 
pay,'*  says  Professor  Ely,  ''begins  to  yield 
such  results  as  money  paid  in  taxation,  pro- 
vided always  that  it  is  prudently  expended 
by  a  good  government.  Let  a  small  house- 
owner  in  a  city  like  Baltimore,  who  pays, 
say,  fifty  dollars  a  year  in  taxes,  reflect  on 
what  he  receives  in  return.  He  receives, 
dollar  for  dollar,  five  times  as  much  as  for 


1 86  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

any  other  expenditure.  Streets,  libraries, 
free  schools,  protection  to  property  and  per- 
son, including  health  department,  pleasure- 
grounds  royal  in  their  magnificence, — all 
these  are  placed  at  his  service.  What 
private  corporation  ever  gave  one-fifth  as 
much  for  the  same  money?"  All  this  is 
possible  because  of  the  great  economies  of 
co-operation  when  a  whole  city  joins  in  the 
enterprise.  And  if  the  principles  of  taxa- 
tion were  equitably  adjusted,  so  that  each 
one  should  be  called  on  to  bear  his  fair 
share  of  the  public  burdens  according  to  his 
abiUty,  and  if  the  citizens,  in  the  spirit  of 
the  royal  law,  heartily  responded  to  this 
arrangement,  each  man  determining  to  put 
upon  his  brother  no  part  of  his  own  load, 
taxation  would  cease  to  be  a  problem,  and 
would  present  to  us  a  welcome  opportunity 
not  only  of  serving  our  fellows,  but  of  in- 
creasing our  own  happiness. 

It  may  be  supposed  that  this  suggestion 
borders  on  Utopianism;  and,  indeed,  I  have 
no    expectation    that    it   will    be    entirely 


OF   THE  FUTURE,  1 8/ 

adopted  in  the   Greater  New  York  during 
tlie   coming  administration;    but    I    am   as 
fully  convinced  as  I  can  be  of  anything  that 
you  will  never  get  this  problem  of  taxation 
solved,    with    any    degree    of     satisfaction, 
until  you  have  brought  this   obligation    of 
brotherhood  very  distinctly  to  bear  upon  it; 
until  you  make  it  perfectly  clear,  to  Chris- 
tian   men    at    least,    that   it  is  just  as   un- 
brotherly  and   un-Christian    to    make  your 
neighbor  pay  your  taxes  as  it  is  to  steal  his 
pocketbook  or  compel  him  to  serve  you  as 
a  slave.     We  must,  of  course,  do  what  we 
can  to  frame  systems  of  taxation  by  which 
these    obligations    shall    be    equitably    dis- 
tributed and  impartially  enforced;  but  we 
shall  never  get  justice  done  and  peace  estab- 
lished until  the  law  of  brotherhood,  instead 
of  the  law  of  conflict,  is  recognized  as  the 
supreme  law  of  the  social  order. 

Monopoly  is  another  of  the  troublesome 
facts  of  the  social  order.  What  is  monopoly  ? 
It  is  the  successful  attempt  to  get  the 
sources  of  some   commodity  or  service  so 


1 88  THE   SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

completely  under  control  that  the  monopo- 
list can  fix  his  own  price  upon  it.    Monopo- 
lies of  certain  kinds  of  traffic  were  formerly 
granted  by  kings  to   favored    subjects;    in 
later  times  they  are  secured  by  getting  pos- 
session of  lands  or  mines  or  patented  ma- 
chinery, or  by  making  such  combinations  of 
capital  and  resources  that  competition  shall 
be  practically  impossible.     I  will   not  dis- 
cuss   the    methods   by  which    monopoly  is 
secured ;  it  is  the  aim  and  purpose  of  it  that 
I  am  dealing  with.     And  I  suppose  that  the 
simple  purpose  is  to  acquire  power  which 
may  be  used  by  the  monopolist  in  levying 
tribute  upon  the  possessions  and  earnings  of 
his  fellow  men — in  making  them  enrich  him 
by  their  labor.     The  monopolist  makes  no 
bargains  with  those  who  deal  with  him;  the 
price    is    fixed    by   himself.      Economically 
they    are    not    his    equals,    they    are    his 
dependents.     *'Give  a  man  power  over  my 
subsistence,"     said    Alexander     Hamilton, 
"  and  he  has  power  over  the  whole  of  my 
moral  being."     And  there  are  those  who  do 


OF   THE  FUTURE.  1 89 

control,  In  a  large  measure,  the  means  of 
our  subsistence,  and  who  thus  possess  a 
power  over  our  lives  which  one  human  being 
ought  not  to  assume  over  the  life  of  another. 
Such  a  power  does  not  consort  with  brother- 
hood. It  is  not  in  the  heart  of  the  brother 
to  make  of  his  brethren  dependents  on  his 
will  and  servants  of  his  greed  or  his  ambi- 
tion. The  thought  that  his  wealth  is  a 
tribute  that  he  has  had  power  to  enforce 
upon  those  to  whom  he  owes  a  brother's 
love  and  service  would  be  intolerable  to 
him.  It  is  true  that  in  many  cases  the 
tribute  paid  by  each  is  so  small  that  the 
oppression  is  not  felt.  A  profit  of  one  cent 
a  month  out  of  each  of  the  inhabitants  of 
this  country  would  not  seem  large,  but  it 
would  give  me  an  income  of  $8,400,000  a 
year.  The  fact  that  the  exactions  of 
monopoly  are  so  light  has  blinded  us  to  its 
dangers.  For  the  spirit  that  can  make  spoil 
of  humanity,  however  cautiously  it  may 
operate,  is  a  spirit  which  cannot  be  safely 
harbored  among  men.     These  tremendous 


1 90  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

accumulations  of  power  threaten  the  very 
foundations  of  the  social  order.  '*  Liberty 
and  monopoly,"  says  Mr.  Lloyd,  ''cannot 
live  together."  ''When  it  comes  to  know 
the  facts,  the  human  heart  can  no  more 
endure  monopoly  than  American  slavery  or 
Roman  empire."  If  brotherhood  is  the 
fundamental  fact,  this  must  be  so,  for  the 
law  of  brotherhood  is  the  precise  antithesis 
of  the  spirit  of  monopoly.  The  one  bids 
me  by  love  serve  my  neighbor  and  count 
his  interest  my  own ;  the  other  bids  me  by 
craft  make  my  neighbor  serve  me,  while  I 
drain  his  cistern  into  my  reservoir.  It  can- 
not be  difficult  to  see  that  the  essence  of 
the  thing  which  we  call  monopoly  is  the 
very  contradiction  of  the  spirit  of  Christian 
brotherhood. 

Doubtless  we  must  find  ways  of  restrain- 
ing this  power,  or  controlling  it  for  the  good 
of  all.  I  believe  in  monopolies;  indeed, 
vast  economies  are  possible  by  means  of 
them;  but  I  believe  that  the  people  should 
own    every   one   of    them    and    reap    these 


OF   THE  FUTURE.  I9I 

gains,  rather  than  that  a  few  should  be  en- 
riched at  the  expense  of  the  many.  But 
the  one  thing  needful  is  the  application  to 
all  human  relations  of  the  Christian  law  of 
brotherhood.  It  is  well  if  we  forbid  men 
thus  to  lay  tribute  on  one  another:  but  that 
will  avail  us  little  unless  we  can  make  them 
see  that  such  spoliation  violates  the  Chris- 
tian law  as  really  as  does  theft  or  slavery; 
and  that  human  society  cannot  rest  on 
secure  foundations  until  the  desire  to  enrich 
ourselves  at  the  expense  of  our  neighbors  is 
submerged  in  the  nobler  wish  to  make  them 
the  sharers  in  our  prosperity  and  partners  in 
our  happiness. 

The  labor  question  also  is  a  disquieting 
business.  Between  those  who  organize  the 
world's  industries  and  those  who  perform 
them  the  relations  have  come  to  be  some- 
what strained.  On  either  side  there  is  too 
much  suspicion  and  ill  will;  the  struggle 
over  the  division  of  the  product  of  labor  has 
developed  bad  tempers  on  both  sides:  at 
best  we  have  a  state  of  truce  in  which  the 


tg2  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

combatants  tolerate  each  other;  at  worst 
we  have  conflicts  in  which  each  strives  to 
inflict  economic  injury  upon  the  other,  and 
both,  so  far  as  this  purpose  goes,  are  uni- 
formly and  terribly  successful.  The  amount 
of  harm  which  the  assailants  are  able  to  do 
each  other  is  very  great ;  a  considerable  part 
of  the  poverty  and  suffering  of  the  land  and 
a  much  larger  part  of  the  unsocial  feeling 
which  threaten  our  peace  are  due  to  these 
labor  quarrels.  War  between  civilized  men 
is  always  in  the  last  degree  irrational ;  these 
labor  wars  are  no  exception  to  the  rule. 
Every  hour  of  their  continuance  diminishes 
the  product  of  industry  and  reduces  the  sum 
of  welfare  for  both  employers  and  em- 
ployed. 

What  is  the  cure  for  these  disorders  ? 
Many  remedies  are  suggested,  all  of  which 
may  afford  relief.  Conciliation,  arbitration, 
profit-sharing,  ownership  by  the  workmen 
of  stock  in  the  company  which  employs 
them — all  these  are  rational  suggestions  of 
methods  whose   practicability  has  already, 


OF  THE  FUTURE,  ^93 

to    a    considerable    extent,    been    demon- 
strated.    But  there  is  not  much  use  in  the 
temporary  conciliation  of  those  who  intend 
to  hold  themselves  in  relations  which  imply 
hostility ;  and  arbitration  connotes  enmity. 
For  all  these  methods,  and  for  every  other 
attempt  to  find  a  better  way  of  organizing 
labor,  there  is  needed  first  of  all  the  recog- 
nition of  the  fundamental  fact   of   human 
brotherhood.       Those  to  whom   this   is  a 
reality  have  no  need  to  be  reconciled ;  the 
law  of  strife  has  become  to  them  as   un- 
natural as   the  warfare   of  the   right  hand 
against  the  left;  they  are  able  to  see  that 
it  is  a  manifest  absurdity  for  one  social  class 
to  think  to  prosper   through  conflict  with 

other  classes. 

If  men  are  brethren,  and  if  the  most  un- 
natural and  monstrous  business  they  can 
possibly  engage  in  is  fighting  one  another 
(and  that  is  certainly  the  doctrine  of  Jesus 
Christ),  then  I  see  no  reason  why  this  truth 
should  not  be  asserted  and  insisted  on  as 
the  only  principle  that  can  bear  rule  in  the 


194  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

realm  of  labor  and  capital.  I  know  of 
factories  where  it  is  really  believed  and 
acted  on ;  I  know  employers  to  whom  the 
truth  that  the  men  who  work  for  them  are 
their  brother  men,  partners  of  their  welfare 
and  sharers  of  their  prosperity,  is  just  as 
palpable  as  gravitation,  and  just  as  thor- 
oughly respected.  Those  are  happy  fac- 
tories, you  may  guess — and  prosperous,  too, 
thank  God !  They  ought  to  prosper.  Is  it 
really  incredible  that  men  should  find  more 
profit  in  helping  one  another  than  in  cheat- 
ing and  fighting  one  another?  To  some,  to 
many,  I  fear,  it  is  incredible.  With  the 
New  Testament  in  our  hands  for  eighteen 
hundred  years,  we  have  not  yet  really 
learned  to  believe  that  friendship  is  better 
than  strife;  and  we  still  go  on  assuming 
that  the  society  in  which  each  one  is  trying 
to  get  all  he  can  away  from  everybody  else, 
and  to  give  as  little  as  he  can  to  everybody 
else,  is  the  only  normal  society ;  that  if  we 
should  turn  right  about  and  give  all  we 
could  to  everybody,  taking  from  others  only 


OF  THE  FUTURE.  195 

that  which  they  could  freely  give,  we  should 
speedily  find  ourselves   in  the  highway  to 
ruin.     Is  it  not  curious  that  reasonable  men 
should   not   be   able   to   see    that    by   such 
assumptions  the  social  order  is  simply  in- 
verted as  to  its  leading  motive,  and  that  it 
is  high  time  for  those  men  who  have  the 
power   to  turn   the  world   upside  down   to 
come  hither  also,  that  they  may  get  it  right 
side  up?     To  all  right   reason  it  is  so  pal- 
pable, so  utterly  common-sensible,  that  it  is 
cheaper   and    easier    and    safer    and    more 
profitable   for  those   who   are  working   to- 
gether to  be  friends  than  to  be  foes,  to  be 
brothers   than   to   be  competitors— so   per- 
fectly obvious  is  all  this  that  one  sometimes 
feels  like  going  out  with  Wisdom  ''into  the 
top  of  the  high  places,  beside  the  gates  at 
the  entry  of  the  city,  at  the  coming  in  of 
the  doors,"   and  crying   with   her:  ''O  ye 
simple,  understand  prudence,  and  ye  fools, 
be  ye  of  understanding  heart!  ** 

I  have  no  doubt  that  we  need  and  must 
have    some    better   organization    of    labor; 


196  THE   SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

forms  that  give  larger  room  for  the  free 
play  of  brotherhood  than  those  which  now 
prevail — forms  which  shall  invoke  it  and  in- 
corporate it.  But  first  of  all  we  must  get 
the  idea.  We  are  transformed,  we  and  our 
institutions,  by  the  renewing  of  our  minds, 
by  getting  new  ideas.  According  to  our 
faith  it  will  be  unto  us.  Not  until  we 
believe  in  brotherhood  as  the  foundation  of 
the  industrial  order  shall  we  be  able  to  find 
the  forms  which  will  express  it. 

Pauperism  and  crime  are  problems  that 
confront  us.  How  shall  we  eliminate  the 
pauper,  exterminate  the  criminal  ?  Are 
there  laws  that  can  contrive  it,  forces  that 
can  achieve  it?  Repression,  regulation  of 
all  sorts,  have  been  tried ;  the  tale  of  severi- 
ties has  been  exhausted.  We  have  flung  to 
the  pauper  the  dole  which  signified  our 
superiority  and  his  dependence:  that  was 
the  denial  of  brotherhood.  We  have  made 
the  prisoner  an  outcast,  by  our  obdurate 
resentments  disowning  him.  Under  this 
treatment  paupers  and  criminals  are  multi- 


OF  THE  FUTURE.  ^97 

plying  apace.  Is  there  not  some  better  way 
of  dealing  with  them?  Does  the  law  of 
brotherhood  reach  down  to  this  level  ? 
Verily,  it  seems  so.  There  was  Lazarus 
at  the  gate  of  Dives;  there  was  the  thief  on 
the  cross.  ''Blessed  are  ye  poor,"  said 
Jesus;  "yours  is  the  kingdom  of  God." 
"  It  was  I,"  he  said,  "  that  you  found  in 
prison;  that  low-browed,  brutal  creature, 
whom  you  took  by  the  hand  and  lifted  up 

that  was  I.     If  you  had  anointed  vision, 

you  could  see  some  lineaments  of  me  in  that 
repulsive  face." 

So  the  law  of  brotherhood  pledges  us  to 
these.  The  Son  of  Man  came  to  seek  and 
to  save  that  which  was  lost.  He  did  save 
them ;  he  can  save  them ;  and  so  can  we,  if 
his  mind  is  in  us.  Our  fault,  our  shame, 
has  been  that  the  truth  of  brotherhood  has 
been  disallowed,  to  the  pauper  in  our  pride, 
to  the  prisoner  in  our  hardness.  We  have 
suffered  the  one  to  grovel  at  our  feet;  we 
have  forced  the  other  to  skulk  and  hide  from 
our  faces.      Neither  is  the  brotherly  thing 


19^  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

to  do, — how  far  from  it!  Can  we  learn  to 
lift  the  one  to  his  feet  and  to  put  a  brotherly 
arm  about  the  other?  Love  can  save  them 
both, — not  always,  indeed,  without  some 
wholesome  severities  of  discipline;  but  the 
love  that  exalts  character  and  believes  in  the 
divine  possibilities  of  manhood  can  save 
them  both.  And  what  a  task  it  is  to  reach 
and  save  these  degraded  and  sinking  mil- 
lions, to  lift  them  up  into  manhood — a  task 
how  appalling  in  its  magnitude,  but  in  its 
possibilities  how  alluring  to  heroic  faith! 

And  democracy!  There  it  looms  right 
before  us,  writ  large,  in  letters  of  flame,  on 
the  clouds  that  hang  above  our  horizon — 
the  one  social  question  which  includes,  for 
us,  every  other.  Shall  democracy  endure  ? 
Shall  government  of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  for  the  people,  live  and  flourish,  or 
shall  it  perish  from  the  earth  ?  A  question 
of  some  consequence,  one  would  say,  to 
this  nation  at  least,  perhaps  to  some  others! 
Do  you  say  there  is  no  question?  I  answer 
that  over  considerable  spaces  of  this   con- 


OF   THE  FUTURE.  I99 

tinent,  for  considerable  portions  of  time, 
government  of  the  people  has  ceased  to 
exist.  Do  you  pretend  to  say  that  you, 
even  now,  are  living  under  a  government  of 
the  people  ?  How  much  had  the  people  of 
this  State  to  do  with  naming  the  men  who 
are  now,  by  a  fine  fiction,  said  to  represent 
them  in  the  Legislature  ?  or  with  authoriz- 
ing or  inspiring  the  measures  of  that  body  ? 
Is  it  the  people's  will  that  the  Legislature 
of  New  York  has  actually  sought  to  do?  Is 
it  the  people  who  make  nominations  and 
influence  appointments  and  dictate  legisla- 
tion hereabouts?  You  know  better  than  I. 
If  there  is  any  truth  in  current  reports, 
there  is  some  question  as  to  whether 
democracy,  government  by  the  people,  is 
anything  more  than  a  name.  What  we 
have  is  really  government  of  the  people  by 
bosses, — for  whom  the  present  deponent 
saith  not,  though  he  has  his  suspicions. 
Glimpses  are  seen  through  a  screen,  which 
is  becoming  more  and  more  transparent,  of 
the  flitting  forms  of  monopolist  and  pluto- 


200  THE  SOCIAL   PROBLEMS 

crat  playing  into  the  hands  of  the  political 
imperator.  Because  he  has  the  power  they 
are  ready  to  pay  him  heavily  for  immunity 
and  privilege — the  privilege  of  laying  tribute 
upon  the  people;  because  he  gets  their 
money  he  can  debauch  voters,  and  control 
nominations,  and  keep  himself  in  power. 

Is  there  a  remedy  for  this  ?  There  is; 
and,  strange  as  it  may  sound  to  many,  it  is 
nothing  in  the  world  but  the  simple  recog- 
nition of  Christ's  law  of  brotherhood.  For 
Christ's  law  of  brotherhood  is  the  corner- 
stone of  democratic  government.  Mr. 
Lloyd  is  speaking  with  scientific  accuracy 
when  he  says  that  *'  the  Constitution  and 
laws  of  the  United  States  are,  however  im- 
perfectly, the  translation  into  the  language 
of  politics  of  doing  as  you  would  be  done 
by.  * '  The  foundation  of  republican  govern- 
ment is  not,  ** Every  man  for  himself:'*  it 
is,  ^'Each  for  all  and  all  for  each."  On  any 
other  foundation  it  is  theoretically  impossi- 
ble. What  are  the  great  words?  Liberty, 
Equality,  Fraternity, — and  the  greatest  of 


OF   THE  FUTURE.  201 

these  is  Fraternity.  No;  you  cannot  leave 
that  out;  if  you  undertake  to  build  your 
State  on  individual  interest,  bidding  each  to 
seek  his  own,  unmindful  of  his  brother's 
good,  you  will  have — just  what  you  do 
have  in  too  many  places — the  form  of  liberty 
without  the  power  thereof. 

All  that  there  is  need  to  do,  therefore,  is 
simply  to  recognize  the  fundamental  princi- 
ples on  which  our  government  rests,  and 
make  our  practice  conform  to  our  theories. 
We  have  only  to  do  what  every  demagogue 
promises  to  do  when  he  asks  the  votes  of 
his  fellow  citizens.  Does  he  not  always 
assure  them  that  he  will  seek  their  welfare ; 
that  he  will  make  his  own  interests  subordi- 
nate to  the  service  of  the  people?  It  is  not 
probable  that  they  always  believe  him,  but 
he  would  not  dare  to  say  anything  else. 
He  knows,  and  they  know,  we  all  know, 
what  the  ideals  of  a  democracy  are.  That 
every  man  is  a  brother  man;  that  there  are 
no  privileged  classes  and  no  servile  classes; 
that  the  strong  shall  not  aggrandize  them- 


202  THE   SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

selves  by  exploiting  the  weak;  that  all  shall 
see  that  each  has  the  opportunity  of  man- 
hood,— this  is  democracy;  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  brotherhood  lies  at  the  base  of 
it.  We  have  only  to  clear  our  minds  of 
cant  and  live  up  to  our  principles;  that  is 
all.  We  have  got  the  idea;  our  creed  is 
sound  enough;  the  only  trouble  with  us  is 
that  we  so  imperfectly  realize  it.  Instead 
of  using  the  power  of  all  for  the  equal  ser- 
vice of  all,  we  have  too  often  permitted  the 
strong  to  monopolize  power  and  to  use  it  in 
the  oppression  of  the  weak;  we  have  legal- 
ized and  fostered  gigantic  egoisms  Avhose 
purpose  it  is  to  lay  tribute  on  the  people. 
All  this  is  in  despite  and  defiance  of  the  first 
principles  of  brotherhood.  What  we  have 
to  do  is  to  repent  and  do  the  first  works; 
to  make  our  democracy  mean,  not  monopoly 
nor  autocracy,  but  government  of  the  peo- 
ple, by  the  people,  for  the  people. 

"  But  have  not  the  people  all  the  rights 
that  law  can  give  them?  "  you  may  be  ask- 
ing,    ^*Why    do    they    not    protect    them- 


OF   THE  FUTURE.  203 

selves  ?     And  if  they  do  not,  who  can  save 
them  ?  " 

Yes,  I  answer;  they  have  all  the  rights 
that  law  can  give  them ;  and  the  issue  shows 
us  how  weak  the  law  is  for  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  humanity.  Something  more  than 
legal  privilege  is  needed :  the  wisdom  and 
the  will  to  use  it  rightly  are  needed  also. 
If  the  ballot  were  a  weapon  of  self-defense 
— which  is  about  the  highest  idea  of  it  that 
some  people  entertain — it  would  avail  very 
little  to  millions  of  our  voters,  for  they 
would  not  know  how  to  use  it  for  their  own 
protection.  Very  dim,  indeed,  are  the  con- 
ceptions of  its  meaning  entertained  by  great 
multitudes  of  those  who  are  intrusted  with 
it.  I  asked  Mr.  Reynolds,  one  day,  how 
many  of  those  swarming  tribes  and  tongues 
on  the  East  Side  of  New  York  had  any  idea 
of  citizenship.  ''Well,"  he  said,  **most  of 
them  have  found  oat  that  a  vote  is  worth 
something — that  they  can  get  money  for 
it."  That,  alas!  is  the  first  lesson  in  poli- 
tics that  a  great  many  of  them  learn, — the 


204  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

only  lesson,  I  fear,  that  multitudes  of  them 
ever  have  learned.  And  it  is  this  that 
makes  the  problem  of  our  democracy  so 
serious.  A  democracy  it  is  not  when  such 
elements  largely  enter  into  its  constituencies. 
The  men  who  can  thus  be  manipulated  by 
demagogues  are  not  standing  with  us  upon 
the  level  of  brotherhood;  they  have  sold 
their  birthright,  the  badge  of  their  political 
manhood ;  they  have  consented  to  become 
the  underlings  of  bosses  and  the  tools  of  the 
conspirators  against  liberty.  If  we  have 
not  the  power  to  prevent  this,  we  shall  not 
wait  long  for  the  unrolling  of  the  scroll  of 
flame  on  which  the  words  of  doom  are 
written.  Listen  to  this  solemn  warning  of 
the  man  who  fell  the  other  day  fighting 
against  the  despotism  of  the  boss: 

*'  When  there  is  general  patriotism,  vir- 
tue, and  intelligence,  the  more  democratic 
the  government  the  better  it  will  be;  but 
when  there  is  gross  inequality  in  the  distri- 
bution of  wealth,  the  more  democratic  the 
government  the  worse  it  will  be ;  for  while 


OF   THE  FUTURE.  205 

rotten  democracy  may  not  in  itself  be  worse 
than  rotten  autocracy,  its  effect  upon  na- 
tional character  will  be  worse.     To  give  the 
suffrage  to  tramps,  to  paupers,  to  men  to 
whom  the  chance  to  labor  is  a  boon,  to  men 
who  must  beg  or  steal  or  starve,  is  to  invite 
destruction.     To  put  political  power  in  the 
hands  of  men  embittered  and  degraded  by 
poverty  is  to  tie  firebrands  to  foxes  and  turn 
them  loose  amid  the  standing  corn;   it  is  to 
put  out  the  eyes  of  a  Samson  and  to  twine 
his  arms  around  the  pillars  of  national  life." 
What  shall  be  done  about  it  ?     Shall  we 
take  this  power  from  those  who  are  not  fit 
to  use  it?     That  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  do: 
there  are  barricades  and  dynamite  along  that 
road.     The  only  way  that  I   can  see  is  to 
lift   these   multitudes   up  to   the    levels    of 
citizenship ;  to  deliver  them  from  the  thrall- 
dom  into  which,  in  their  pitiful  ignorance, 
they  are  selling  themselves,  into  the  man- 
hood which  is  their  heritage.     Our  brothers 
they  are  by  right  divine;  we  must  redeem 
them,  and  make  them  worthy  of  the  honors 


206  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

of  brotherhood.  There  is  no  salvation  for 
our  democracy  unless  we  can  save  them. 
It  is  avast  undertaking,  no  doubt;  but  how 
simple  it  would  be  if  all  who  profess  and 
call  themselves  Christians  would  but  gird 
themselves  for  the  work  of  realizing  here  on 
the  earth  the  brotherhood  which  He  came 
to  found! 

So  it  all  comes  back  to  this  at  last.  Of 
all  our  social  questions,  this  is  the  one:  Do 
we  believe  in  Christ's  law  of  brotherhood  ? 
Are  we  willing  to  recognize  it  as  the  funda- 
mental law  of  all  our  social  life,  and  to  test 
all  our  methods,  all  our  institutions,  by  it  ? 
Of  course  there  are  millions  of  people  in  the 
world — Christians  not  a  few,  so  called — who 
do  not  believe  what  Jesus  told  us  about  the 
Father,  who  flatly  deny  it  all.  When  there 
was  only  one  man  in  the  world,  they  say, 
God  was  the  Father  of  that  one ;  but  before 
there  were  two  he  had  ceased  to  be  the 
Father;  the  fall  of  man  was  a  fall  out  of 
sonship  into  something  else — strangerhood 
or  alienship.     Man  may  become  a  child  of 


OF  THE  FUTURE.  20/ 

God  if  he  will  repent  and  be  converted; 
until  that  change  passes  upon  him,  he  must 
not  say  "Our  Father."  And  if  we  are  not 
the  sons  of  God,  then,  of  course,  we  are  not 
brothers.  What  are  we  ?  Competitors,  I 
suppose;  there  is  no  better  word.  It  is  on 
this  assumption  that  most  of  our  theology 
and  our  political  economy  has  been  built. 
Here,  just  here,  is  the  tap-root  of  most  of 
our  social  disturbances.  The  whole  creation 
groaneth  and  travaileth  together,  waiting 
for  the  manifestation  of  the  sons  of  God, — 
waiting  for  the  truth  to  shine  out,  as  the 
lightning  shineth,  from  the  one  end  of  the 
heaven  to  the  other,  that  men  are  the 
children  of  God,  brothers  by  birthright, — 
not  foes,  not  strangers,  but  helpers  one  of 
another. 

Fellow  men,  we  must  believe  it!  What 
is  the  good  of  disputing  it  and  fighting 
against  it  any  longer  ?  Has  not  the  law  of 
strife  wrought  woe  and  desolation  long, 
enough  ?  Sometimes  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  day  of  the  great  revelation  cannot  be 


208  THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEMS 

very  far  off.  When  we  see  selfishness  in  the 
industrial  realm  climbing  into  the  colossal 
plutocracies  that  crush  individual  rights  and 
lay  their  palsying  hand  on  all  our  liberties; 
when  we  see  selfishness  in  the  State  usurp- 
ing all  powers,  and  using  the  people  as  the 
tools  of  its  vast  malefactions,  it  seems  to 
me  that  we  are  witnessing  a  demonstration 
of  what  selfishness,  when  it  is  finished, 
bringeth  forth,  which  ought  to  convince  the 
world  that  there  must  be  some  better  rule 
of  life.  There  is  something  so  much  better, 
so  much  nobler,  waiting  for  us  all,  and  not 
far  away !  How  rich  and  strong  and  happy 
we  might  be,  if  we  would  only  believe  in  it, 
and  lay  hold  upon  it  with  the  faith  that 
worketh  by  love!  What  possibilities  are 
before  us  as  soon  as  we  learn  that  life 
means  love ! 

"We  are  to  become  fathers,  mothers,** 
says  Mr.  Lloyd,  **for  the  spirit  of  the  father 
and  mother  is  not  in  us  while  we  can  say  of 
any  child  that  it  is  not  ours,  and  leave  it  in 
the  grime.    We  are  to  become  men,  women, 


OF   THE  FUTURE.  209 

for  to  all  about,  reinforcing  us,  we  shall  in- 
sure full  growth,  and  thus  insure  it  to  our- 
selves. We  are  to  become  gentlemen, 
ladies,  for  we  will  not  accept  from  another 
any  service  we  are  not  willing  to  return  in 
kind.  We  are  to  become  honest,  giving 
where  we  get,  and  getting  with  the  knowl- 
edge and  consent  of  all.  We  are  to  become 
rich,  for  we  shall  share  in  the  wealth  now 
latent  in  idle  men  and  idle  land,  and  in  the 
fertility  of  work  done  by  those  who  have 
ceased  to  withstand  but  stand  with  each 
other.  As  we  walk  our  parks  we  already 
see  that  by  saying  'thine*  to  every  neighbor 
we  may  say  'mine'  of  palaces,  gardens,  art, 
science,  far  beyond  any  possibility  to  selfish- 
ness, even  the  selfishness  of  kings.  We 
shall  become  patriots,  for  the  heart  will 
know  why  it  thrills  to  the  flag.  Those 
folds  wave  the  salute  of  a  greater  love  than 
that  of  the  man  who  will  lay  down  his  life 
for  his  friend.  There  floats  the  banner  of 
the  love  of  millions,  who,  though  they  do 
not  know  you  and  have  never  seen  you,  will 


2IO  THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEMS 

die  for  you  and  are  living  for  you, — doing  in 
a  thousand  little  services  unto  you  as  you 
would  be  done  by.  And  the  little  patriot- 
ism which  is  the  love  of  the  humanity 
fenced  within  our  frontier  will  widen  into 
the  reciprocal  service  of  all  men.  Generals 
were,  merchants  are,  brothers  will  be, 
humanity's  representative  men." 

That  is  part  of  what  it  means — a  little,  a 
very  little,  of  all  that  it  means.  And  the 
world  is  waiting  wearily  to  see  it,  to  walk  in 
the  light  and  joy  of  it. 

I  think  of  that  morning  on  the  shore  of 
Galilee,  where,  after  his  resurrection,  our 
Lord  appeared  in  the  early  dawn  to  the  dis- 
ciples who  had  toiled  all  night  and  taken 
nothing.  *'  Children,"  said  the  Master, 
**  have  you  aught  to  eat  ?  They  answered 
him,  No.  And  he  said  unto  them,  Cast  the 
net  on  the  right  side  of  the  boat,  and  ye 
shall  find.  They  cast  therefore,  and  now 
they  were  not  able  to  draw  it  for  the  multi- 
tude of  fishes."  If  through  the  long  night 
of  the  centuries  the  toilers  on  the  sea  of  life 


OF   THE   FUTURE.  211 

have  taken  less  than  they  hoped  for,  may 
it  not  be  because  they  have  sought  their 
gains  on  the  wrong  side  of  human  nature — 
on  the  side  of  selfishness  and  strife  ?  And 
is  it  not  his  voice — the  voice  of  the  Son  of 
Man — that  now,  in  the  dawning  of  a  better 
day,  we  hear  bidding  us  cast  the  net  on  the 
other  side;  to  believe  that  love  is  wiser  than 
craft,  and  that  the  hand  that  is  open  to  give 
will  forever  hold  more  of  the  good  of  life 
than  the  hand  that  is  clenched  to  keep  ? 


XTbe  Cburcb  of  tbe  jf  uture* 

WILLIAM   J.  TUCKER. 


VI. 

Ube  Cburcb  ot  the  future^ 

By  the  Rev.  WILLIAM  J.  TUCKER,  LL.D.,i 
President  of  Dartmouth  College. 

I  ASSUME  that  you  are  quite  as  well  aware 
as  I  am  that  the  subject  which  you  have 
assigned  to  me  is  full  of  temptation. 
Happy  is  the  man  who  can  discuss  the 
Church,  even  the  Church  of  the  future, 
without  **  falling  into  many  foolish  and 
hurtful"  disputations  ''which  war  against 
the  soul."  I  make  no  attempt  to  avoid  the 
difficulty,  except  it  be  to  affirm,  at  the  out- 
set, our  agreement  with  all  believers  in 
Christ  at  the  essential  point. 


^  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  Thursday  evening, 
November  ii,  1897. 

215 


2l6     THE    CHURCH  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

The  Church  of  the  future  must  be  the 
Church.  In  this,  I  say,  we  are  all  as  clearly 
agreed  as  are  those  who  are  known  by  distinc- 
tion as  **  churchmen."  The  revolt  against 
ecclesiasticism  on  our  part  has  never  led  us 
to  accept  any  weak  and  shifting  substitutes 
for  the  Church  of  Christ.  We  have  never 
abandoned  our  right  in  the  common  posses- 
sion. The  right  to  possess  is  the  right  to 
inhabit,  the  right  to  appropriate,  the  right 
which  may  deepen  at  any  time  into  the 
obligation  to  reform.  These  are  still  our 
rights  in  the  Church. 

The  significant  fact  to-day  within  the 
Church  is  the  strength  of  the  movement 
toward  Christian  unity  among  the  more 
advanced  types  of  Protestantism.  It  is 
futile  for  us  to  say  that  we,  who  are  Prot- 
estants of  Protestants,  are  happy  in  the 
mere  fact  of  denominations  and  sects.  If 
the  sect  is  the  price  of  freedom,  we  will  pay 
it.  If  it  is  the  permanent  price,  we  will  pay 
it  to  the  end.  But  a  sect,  a  denomination, 
a  communion,  whatever  name  you  may  use 


THE   CHURCH  OF   THE  FUTURE.     21/ 

to  declare  or  to  disguise  the  fact  of  a  part, 
and  however  that  part  may  have  been 
dowered  with  freedom,  does  not  represent 
our  full  idea  of  what  the  Church  ought  to 
be,  or  our  full  faith  in  what  the  Church  will 
be.  It  does  not  express  our  present  feel- 
ings and  desires.  The  hymns  we  sing  are 
the  hymns  of  the  Church  universal.  We 
would  not  tolerate  a  sectarian  hymn.  The 
saints  whom  we  appropriate  are  of  all  com- 
munions. The  fact  that  some  of  them 
might  have  disowned  us  does  not  lessen  our 
sense  of  ownership.  We  crave  the  largest 
possible  fellowship  among  the  living — pos- 
sible within  the  limits  of  truth  and  honor. 
We  are  working  the  great  federal  idea  as  the 
best  practical  embodiment  in  our  time  of 
the  unity  of  the  Church.  Nowhere,  as  I 
believe,  is  there  a  clearer  conception  of  the 
fundamental  idea  of  the  Church,  or  a  deeper 
sense  of  its  meaning,  than  among  those  who 
are  forced  to  stand  for  the  dignity  and 
rights  of  the  churches.  We  accept  to  the 
full  the  distinction   between  a  purely  per- 


2l8     THE    CHURCH  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

sonal  Christianity  and  the  organic  union  of 
souls  in  Christ. 

I  pause  to  emphasize  the  distinction.  I 
go  back  for  a  moment  into  the  origins  of 
Christianity.  The  first  view  we  have  of  the 
Christian  Church  is  that  of  the  group  around 
the  table  of  Christ.  John  alone  with  Jesus 
would  have  represented  discipleship,  but 
not  the  Church.  The  Church  is  a  society 
of  which  the  original  and  simplest  form  is 
the  group.  So  we  have  the  outward  growths 
of  the  Church — first  the  group  gathered 
about  the  person  of  the  human  Christ,  then 
the  society  organized  in  his  name  to  com- 
memorate his  sacrifice  and  to  bear  witness 
to  his  resurrection,  and  then  the  community 
springing  up  on  every  hand  permeated  with 
his  Spirit,  and  striving  to  exemplify  his 
teachings.  We  are,  of  course,  back  of  the 
great  formalities  of  the  Church.  Nothing 
has  as  yet  been  conventionalized.  The 
newness,  the  absolute  strangeness  of  the  life 
of  the  Church  gave  it  its  first  unity.  The 
unity  of  the  early  Church  was  built  up  on 


THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE.     219 

the  rare  and  seemingly  impossible  virtues, 
like  the  forgiveness  of  enemies.  A  man 
could  not  be  a  Christian  in  those  days  and 
be  like  anybody  else  outside  his  own  kind. 
The  Church  was  a  succession  or  aggregation 
of  groups  of  like-minded  and  like-hearted 
men  and  women,  made  one  by  the  incom- 
ing of  that  Life  which  has  mastered  all,  and 
which  had  changed  them  in  measure  to  its 
likeness:  every  one  of  whom  could  say, 
'*  The  life  which  I  now  Hve  I  live  in  the 
faith  of  the  wSon  of  God  who  loved  me  and 
gave  himself  for  me." 

One  fact  explains  the  origin  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  The  Spirit  of  Christ,  spread- 
ine  from  life  to  life,  made  some  form 
necessary  to  express  and  develop  the  col- 
lective life.  How  much  of  organization, 
how  much  of  ritual,  how  much  of  creed,  was 
the  open  and  varying  question.  It  is  still. 
It  is  one  of  the  questions  which  confronts 
Christianity  as  it  enters  each  new  age,  and 
each  new  race,  and  every  new  stage  of 
Christian  civilization.     And  there  seems  to 


220     THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

be  but  one  answer  to  the  question  from 
the  spiritual  side:  no  more  organization  or 
ritual  or  creed  than  the  Spirit  of  Christ  can 
inform  and  utilize ;  up  to  that  limit,  perfect 
liberty. 

I  assume  that  the  celebration  of  the  half- 
century  of  this  church,  so  wonderful  in  its 
history,  is  a  fit  occasion  for  the  reaffirmation 
of  faith  in  the  Church  universal,  the  holy 
Catholic  Church.  The  life  of  this  particular 
church,  which  stands  out  with  so  much  dis- 
tinction, if  you  will  with  so  much  separate- 
ness,  has  no  other  source  than  that  which 
feeds  the  whole  body  of  Christ.  And  yet, 
because  of  its  history,  because  of  its  dis- 
tinctive qualities,  because  of  the  very  con- 
trast which  it  has  to  offer,  it  has  the  right 
to  ask  its  own  questions,  to  hold  its  own 
opinions,  to  cherish  its  own  faith  about  the 
Church  of  the  future.  Especially  it  has  the 
right  to  ask  why  so  many  and  so  great 
divergencies  from  the  common  type  are 
necessary,  why  must  there  be  so  many 
separate      communions      and       individual 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE.     221 

churches  which  bear  so  conspicuously  the 
stamp  of  independence. 

Or,  to  change  the  form  of  the  question 
and  extend  it,  why  is  the  Church  at  large 
so  far  away  from  the  realization  of  its  own 
working  unity,  unable  as  yet  to  think  or  act 
or  worship  in  any  real  spiritual  unity,  to 
say  nothing  of  uniformity  ? 

I  address  myself,  in  what  I  may  further 
say,  to  the  answer  to  this  question.  The 
answer,  to  my  mind,  is  twofold;  a  part  of 
it  is  written  in  history,  a  part  of  it  is  being 
wrought  out  before  our  eyes. 

First,  the  Church  can  never  realize  its 
own  working  unity — the  Church  of  the 
future  cannot  be  any  other  than  the  Church 
of  to-day — until  it  makes  a  sufficient  place 
in  its  life  for  freedom,  particularly  for 
intellectual  freedom.  The  Church  for  a 
long  time  attempted  to  secure  unity  by 
ignoring  and  suppressing  freedom.  The 
result  was  Protestantism.  The  same  result 
is  sure  to  follow  to-day,  and  always,  even 
when  the  attempt  is  made  in  our  Protestant 


222     THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE, 

communions.  Protestantism  is  not  a  his- 
tory. It  is  a  principle.  We  make  no 
progress  by  celebrating  historic  events. 
We  make  progress  by  applying  principles. 
Now,  the  principle  of  Protestantism  is  one 
essential  factor  in  the  unity  of  the  Church. 
The  rights  of  conscience,  of  private  judg- 
ment, of  free  investigation,  have  gained  a 
standing  which  cannot  be  withdrawn.  It  is 
absurd  to  conceive  of  the  Church  of  the 
future  as  existing  without  them.  How  long 
it  will  take  to  win  for  them  complete  recog- 
nition no  one  can  tell.  Sometimes  we  are 
amazed  at  the  apparent  backwardness  of  the 
Church.  Examples  come  to  our  knowledge 
which  we  cannot  ignore.  But  if  you  are 
recalling,  as  I  speak,  the  various  attempts 
which  have  been  made  during  the  past  years 
to  restrict  the  honest  freedom  of  thought  or 
inquiry,  we  must  also  remind  ourselves  of 
the  uniform  failure  of  these  attempts. 

Resistance  to  the  principle  of  religious 
liberty  is  intrenched  for  the  most  part  in 
scant  minorities.     All  the   more    advanced 


THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE.     223 

communions  arc  agreed  in  theory  and  fact 
— for  nearly  every  one  has  now  been  put  to 
the  test — that  the  Church  must  make  room 
for  the  largest  and  freest  growth  of  the 
individual.  We  accept  no  standards  which 
lower  the  stature  of  the  Christian  man. 
Rather  than  allow  this,  even  in  the  assured 
interest  of  unity,  we  will  wait,  wait  **  until 
we  all  come  in  the  unity  of  the  faith  and  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God  unto  the 
perfect  man,  unto  the  measure  of  the 
stature  of  the  fullness  of  Christ.'* 

But  this  part  of  my  answer  need  detain 
us  no  longer.  It  has  been  written  in  his- 
tory. The  Church  of  the  future  must  be 
free.  It  has  bought  its  freedom  with  a 
great  price.  I  have  no  doubt  about  the 
coming  freedom  of  the  Church.  My  doubts 
and  fears  all  center  around  the  second  part 
of  my  answer.  I  have  reserved,  therefore, 
time  for  its  larger  presentation. 

The  Church  can  never  realize  its  working 
unity,  it  cannot  realize  itself,  until  it  is  will- 
ing, and  until  it  knows  how  to  lose  itself  in 


224     THE   CHURCH  OF   THE  FUTURE. 

the  life  of  humanity.  Do  you  say  that  this 
answer  is  so  broad  that  it  is  vague  ?  Then 
let  me  bring  you  back  to  the  law  of  Christ, 
as  true  to  the  Church  as  to  the  individual, 
"Whosoever  will  save  his  life  shall  lose  it, 
and  whosoever  will  lose  his  life  for  my  sake 
shall  save  it."  This  was  the  law  to  which 
Christ  subjected  himself,  and  of  which  he 
reaped  the  benefit.  And  the  marvel  of  his 
life  was  not  simply  the  willingness,  it  was 
still  more  the  ability,  one  may  almost  say 
the  skill,  to  lose  himself  in  humanity. 
Herein  Tay,  of  course,  the  mystery  of  the 
Incarnation,  but  equally,  also,  the  clear  and 
fine  action  of  the  whole  after-life.  With 
what  restraint  he  kept  himself  from  all  par- 
tial and  false  assumptions  of  authority, 
ecclesiastical  or* political !  How  consistently 
he  refused  to  be  drawn  aside  into  secondary 
and  passing  issues!  With  what  tremendous 
steadfastness  he  held  to  the  one  course  which 
would  take  him  completely,  absolutely,  and 
forever  into  the  life  of  men!  Call  to  mind 
the  glowing  words  of  St.  Paul  as  he  tries  to 


THE   CHURCH  OF   THE  FUTURE.     22  5 

tell  the  process  and  then  to  show  the 
reward.  "Who,  being  in  the  form  of  God, 
thought  it  not  a  thing  to  be  desired  to 
retain  his  equality  with  God,  but  made  him- 
self of  no  reputation  and  took  upon  him  the 
form  of  a  servant,  and,  being  found  in 
fashion  as  a  man,  he  humbled  himself  and 
became  obedient  unto  death,  even  the  death 
of  the  cross.  Wherefore  God  hath  highly 
exalted  him  and  given  him  a  name  which  is 
above  every  name,  that  at  the  name  of  Jesus 
every  knee  should  boW,  of  things  in  heaven, 
and  things  in  earth,  and  of  things  under  the 
earth,  and  that  every  tongue  should  confess 
that  he  is  Lord,  to  the  glory  of  God  the 
Father. ' ' 

There  are  limits  to  the  imitation  of 
Christ,  but  who  will  doubt  that  it  is  the 
supreme  business  of  his  Church  to  repro- 
duce his  spirit  and  his  method  and  his  pur- 
pose in  the  world  ?  What  is  the  Church 
put  into  the  world  for,  except  to  lose  itself 
in  the  life  of  the  world,  that  it  may  thereby 
save   its  own   life  and  that   of  the  world  ? 


226     THE   CHURCH  OF   THE  FUTURE, 

This  is  not  the  loss  of  identity;  it  is  the 
exact  opposite  of  all  compromise  or  conces- 
sion; it  is  simply  the  complete  and  joyous 
surrender  of  itself  to  the  one  end  and  object 
of  its  existence.  But  the  history  of  the 
Church  shows  a  constant  struggle  between 
the  two  policies,  the  policy  of  saving  and 
the  policy  of  losing.  Only  in  the  great 
moods  of  the  Church  has  it  risen  to  the 
sublime  conception  or  practice  of  Jesus,  of 
losing  its  life  in  that  of  humanity.  Such 
was  the  mood  of  the  martyr  period,  when 
the  Church  poured  out  so  fully  its  life-blood 
into  the  heart  of  the  world.  Such  was  the 
mood  of  the  great  reforming  period,  when 
the  Church  had  found  out  that  it  could  do 
better  for  the  world  than  to  suffer  at  its 
hands,  and  straightway  undertook  to  give  it 
liberty  and  law  and  righteousness.  Such 
was  the  mood  of  the  period  which  ushered 
in  modern  missions,  expressed  in  the  re- 
markable saying  of  young  Mills  to  his 
comrades,  "We  ought  to  carry  the  Gospel 
to  dark  and  heathen  lands,  and  we  can  do 


THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE,     22/ 

it  if  we  will."  And  such  I  believe  to  be  the 
mood  into  which  the  Church  is  beginning  to 
rise,  in  the  person  of  its  choicer  souls,  by 
which  it  is  fulfilling  the  task  of  entering  into 
the  real  life  of  the  modern  city,  identifying 
itself  with  the  humanity  which  has  no  voice 
but  a  cry,  or  a  grievance,  or  a  threat,  and 
trying  to  interpret  man  to  man. 

But  over  against  these  greater  and  rare 
moods  is  the  common  and  commonplace 
mood  of  the  Church,  which  is  always  ex- 
pressed in  one  way  or  another  in  the  policy 
of  saving  its  own  life, — a  policy  of  exclusion, 
of  separation  from  the  life  of  humanity,  a 
policy  of  using  the  world  for  its  own 
aggrandizement.  I  do  not  put  in  evidence 
the  degenerate  and  worldly  periods  of  the 
Church.  I  call  your  attention  to  the  very 
theories  and  doctrines  which  the  Church  has 
tried  to  make  itself  believe,  and  trained  its 
children  to  believe,  based  on  the  exclusive- 
ness  and  separateness  of  its  life  from  that  of 
the  common  humanity;  the  appalling  doc- 
trine  of  the  arbitrary  election  of  the  few 


228     THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

against  the  many,  or  the  weak  and  illogical 
theory  of  the  hopelessness  of  the  many,  for 
want  of  a  present  and  visible  connection 
between  a  Universal  Saviour  and  those  for 
whom  he  died.  I  call  your  attention  to  the 
ease  with  which  the  Church  in  any  com- 
munity follows  the  lines  of  social  classifica- 
tion and  becomes  identified  with  men  in 
classes.  I  call  your  attention  to  its  con- 
tentment with  works  of  charity  and  rescue, 
which  reach  the  few,  instead  of  concern 
about  changing  the  conditions  which  affect 
all.  I  call  your  attention  to  the  want  of  a 
steadfast  and  united  effort  and  struggle  in 
regard  to  those  interests  which  are  wrapped 
up  in  the  life  of  the  city  and  the  State.  I 
make  mention  of  these  things,  not  in  the 
way  of  an  indictment  against  the  Church, 
for  that  is  far  from  our  present  business, 
but  that  we  may  not  underestimate  the 
problem  before  us.  It  is  nothing  less,  as  I 
have  said,  than  to  cause  the  Church  to 
believe  in  and  to  carry  out  the  policy  of 
losing  itself  in  the  life  of  humanity.     The 


THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE.     229 

hopeful  sign  is  that  the  idea  is  coming  in 
and  beginning  to  shape  itself  into  a  faith. 
This  is  the  vision  of  the  latter  day,  not  of 
a  Church  saved  out  of  the  world,  but  of  a 
world  redeemed  by  the  Church.  In  one  of 
his  more  daring  utterances  Dr.  Dale  once 
spoke  of  the  motive  which  impelled  Christ 
to  come  into  the  world.  It  must  have 
been,  he  said,  that  he  somehow  felt  that  his 
fortune  was  bound  up  in  the  fortune  of 
humanity.  Surely  this  is  true  of  his 
Church.  It  cannot  be  much  better  in  the 
end  than  it  can  succeed  in  making  the 
world.  The  great  object  for  which  it  longs 
and  prays  touching  its  own  life  will  not 
come  about  directly,  but  indirectly  through 
its  service  in  the  life  around  it.  The 
Church  is  intent  upon  unity.  That  will  not 
be  brought  about  by  any  force  working  from 
within,  not  by  agreements  or  adjustments 
or  concessions  or  compromises.  The  unity 
of  the  Church  will  come  in  only  through  the 
brotherhood  of  man. 

And  now,  do  you  ask  me  how  this  idea  is 


230     THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE, 

to  be  realized,  how  this  policy  is  to  be  car- 
ried out  by  the  Church  of  saving  its  life  by 
losing  it  in  the  life  of  humanity  ?  I  can 
refer  only  to  certain  sure  agencies.  First, 
the  wise  and  fearless  use  of  truth.  Emer- 
son used  to  say,  "He  who  helps  one  man 
helps  one  man ;  he  who  tells  the  truth  helps 
mankind."  The  supreme  power  of  the 
Church  is  the  power  to  tell  the  truth.  This 
is  other  than  charity,  except  as  the  truth  is 
told  in  love.  But  the  truth  to  be  told  must 
be  known,  and  to  be  known  it  must  be 
sought  out.  Courage  without  knowledge  is 
mere  audacity.  It  may  exhibit  the  man,  it 
will  not  help  the  truth.  I  believe  that  the 
power  of  the  Church  of  the  future  will  rest 
more  rather  than  less  upon  its  pulpit.  A 
truth-knowing,  truth-loving,  truth-telling 
pulpit  will  carry  the  truth  into  the  deepest 
and  most  remote  places.  So  this  Church, 
through  its  pulpit,  carried  the  truth  of  the 
riehts  of  man  down  into  the  heart  of  the 
Nation,  and  out  into  its  uttermost  parts. 
No   other  agency  could    have  wrought    so 


THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE.     23I 

mightily  against  slavery  and  for  freedom  as 
the  plain,  uncompromising,  unceasing  truth. 
Truth  which  is  timely  will  bear  iteration. 
Blow  on  blow  will  tell.  Appeal  after  appeal 
will  be  heard.  The  truth  will  prevail. 
That  is  our  hope  in  present  moral  issues  as 
in  respect  to  the  past,  if  only  we  can  get  a 
like  hold  upon  the  truth,  the  whole  truth, 
and  nothing  but  the  truth. 

And  next   to   the  persistent  use    of  the 
timely  truth  I  put  the  training  of  the  social 
conscience.      The  modern  Church  has  thus 
far    been   brought   up    in    individualism — a 
strong  and  wholesome   discipUne,  but    not 
sufficient  for  present  conditions  or  for  those 
which  are  impending.     It  is  our    constant 
complaint   that  corporate  action   is   not  as 
responsible  as  individual    action.      We  say 
that   the   same    man   cannot   be   depended 
upon  to  act  with  others  as  he  will  act  when 
alone.      Perhaps   we   ought    not   to   expect 
that  he  wrill.     Nevertheless,  the  fact  remains 
that  corporate  responsibility  must  bear  some 
proportion  to    the  tremendous  advance   in 


232     THE  CHURCH  OF   THE  FUTURE, 

the  absorption  of  individual  activity  into 
corporate  activity.  You  have  lost  the  in- 
dividual; how  are  you  going  to  follow  him 
with  individualism  ?  Individual  responsi- 
bility is  becoming  capitalized;  how  are  you 
going  to  get  at  the  moral  value  of  the  new 
capital  ? 

Or,  carry  the  thought  over  into  our  social 
and  civic  obligations.  In  the  old  days  of 
Boston,  in  the  time  of  its  transition  from  a 
great  village  into  a  city,  the  citizens  organ- 
ized themselves  into  a  Watch  and  Ward 
Society.  They  took  turns  in  patrolling  the 
streets.  Of  course  this  could  not  last.  A 
city  means  delegated  authority,  the  creation 
of  departments  to  do  certain  things,  and 
then  usually  the  organization  of  societies  to 
see  that  they  do  them.  This  is  the  process 
by  which  we  divest  ourselves  of  individual 
responsibility, — not  by  denying  it  in  the  first 
instance,  but  by  putting  the  exercise  of  it 
at  a  further  and  further  remove  from  us,  till 
at  last  with  this  removal  of  responsibility 
there  comes  in  the   gradual  loss  of  senti' 


THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE.     233 

ment,  of  feeling,  and  even  of  shame.  I 
suppose  that  it  would  be  as  hard  for  the 
average  citizen  of  this  city  to  repent  of  his 
share  of  its  sin  as  for  a  man  trained  in  the 
New  England  theology  to  repent  of  the  sin 
of  Adam.  He  doesn't  know  how  to  do  it. 
His  mind,  as  now  trained,  is  not  capable  of 
working  that  way. 

What  we  want,  in  the  Church  at  least,  is 
a  habit  of  mind  which  will  correspond  to 
present  facts  and  conditions.  It  is  useless 
to  confront  new  and  obstinate  conditions 
with  old  habits  of  thinking,  or  with  unused 
sensibilities.  Every  great  movement,  from 
the  Reformation  down,  has  demanded  and 
created  for  itself  an  appropriate  habit  of 
mind  and  of  conscience.  No  great  headway 
can  be  made  until  this  demand  has  been 
complied  with.  When  once  the  present 
demand  has  been  met,  and  a  habit  of  mind 
has  been  created  which  will  express  itself 
steadily  and  rightly  through  sensitiveness 
to  others,  through  responsibility  for  things 
held   in   comn)onj   through   what  we   must 


234     THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE, 

call,  in  spite  of  its  philosophical  vagueness, 
"  the  social  conscience,*'  the  Church  will 
have  made  a  sure  advance  in  the  art  of 
losing  itself  in  the  life  of  humanity. 

And,  finally,  I  urg'e,  as  the  great  incen- 
tive to  the  realization  of  this  end,  the 
acceptance  of  the  idea  itself,  the  announce- 
ment of  it,  the  assumption  that  it  is  here 
and  at  work  in  the  life  of  the  Church.  We 
prepare  ourselves  for  this  conception  of  the 
Church  by  appropriating  it  and  using  it. 
When  the  Baptist  came  among  men,  he 
said,  **  Repent,  repent!  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  at  hand."  When  Jesus  came,  he 
said,  "The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand," 
it  is  here,  "repent  and  believe  the  Gospel." 
Not  preparation  for  something  to  come,  but 
participation  in  something  present !  Let  us 
recognize  every  effort  on  the  part  of  the 
Church,  however  humble  it  may  be,  to  lose 
itself  in  the  life  of  humanity.  Let  us  hold 
it  up  as  the  great  conception.  This  is  not 
an  idea  to  be  taken  up  for  a  mission,  or  a 
social  settlement,  or  a  crusade;  it  is  some- 


THE   CHURCH  OF    THE  FUTURE.     235 

thing  to  be  made  the  business  of  the  great 
Christian  majority.     The  Church  cannot  go 
on  with  its  advanced  work  under    present 
contradictions,  here  and  there  a  few  souls 
the  world  over  losing  themselves  in  the  life 
of  others,  and  everywhere  else  the  Church, 
in  one  way  or  another,  building  itself  up  out 
of  the  world.     Why  have  we  come  to  a  halt 
in   foreign   missions  ?      Chiefly,    I    believe, 
because  we  are  beginning  to  be  ashamed, 
through   all    our   Christian    nature,    of    our 
unsanctified  materiaUsm.     The  nations  have 
found  us  out,  and  we  know  it.     They  have 
explored  Christendom,  and  what  impresses 
them  most  is  the  vast  amount  of  unapplied 
Christianity.     Here,  then,  is  the  immediate 
work  of  the  Church.      Here  lies  the  ready 
task  of  the  new  Christianity,  to  set  Christen- 
dom in  order — its  cities,   its  industries,  its 
society,  its  literature,  its  law.     In  so  doing, 
we  again  make   the    Gospel   the   power  of 
God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that  be- 
lieveth,   to   the   Jew   first,   and  also  to  the 
Greek. 


236     THE   CHURCH  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

The  Church  of  the  future — it  must  be  the 
Church.  Upon  that  we  are  agreed.  What- 
ever may  be  our  interpretation  of  its 
authority,  we  maintain  the  fact  without 
doubt  or  qualification. 

The  Church  of  the  future  will  be  free. 
That  is  a  safe  prophecy.  There  will  be 
room  in  it  not  only  for  men  themselves, 
but  for  all  that  they  know  and  believe  and 
hope  for.  Like  the  city  seen  in  vision,  it 
will  stand  open  wider  and  wider,  that  men 
may  bring  their  glory  and  honor  in  to  it. 

Will  the  Church  learn  to  lose  itself  in  the 
life  of  humanity  ?  Will  it  at  last  catch  the 
sublime  secret  of  its  Master  and  make  that 
its  own  ?  Who  will  venture  to  affirm  so 
much  ?     Who  dares  to  hope  for  less  ? 


IRetrospect  anb  ©utlooft* 

CHARLES   A.    BERRY. 


VII. 

IRettospect  auD  ©utloo??» 

By  Rev.  CHARLES  A.  BERRY,  D.D. 

Dr.  Abbott  and  Christian  Friends: 
— I  have  so  far  thrown  my  life  into  the  life 

of  this  congregation  as  to  know  that  it 
would  be  foolish,  not  to  say  cruel,  were  I  to 
detain  you  at  this  time  of  night;  I  will  con- 
tent myself  with  one  or  two  remarks  suited, 
I  think,  to  a  jubilee  occasion. 

The  first  is  that  the  man  or  the  institution 
which  has  ceased  to  think  of  or  care  for 
yesterday  is  "no  good**  for  to-day  or  to- 
morrow. 


^  After  President  Tucker's  address,  Dr.  Berry  was 
asked  to  close  the  exercises  with  a  few  remarks, 
which  are  here  given  as  taken  down  by  the  stenog- 
rapher. 

239 


240       RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK. 

The  second  is  that  the  church  which 
thinks  too  much  about  itself,  about  its  his- 
tory, about  its  principles,  about  its  tradi- 
tions and  aptitudes,  is  going  to  waste  its 
whole  life  in  that  kind  of  thinking,  and  will 
stop  short  of  fruitful  action. 

And  my  third  remark  is  that  the  church 
which  honestly  and  sincerely  finds  fault  with 
itself  has  infinite  promise  of  usefulness  and 
progress  in  the  days  to  come. 

These  three  remarks  have  germinated  in 
my  mind  while  listening  to  the  address  of 
President  Tucker.  I  could  haVe  imagined 
I  was  at  the  Congregational  Union  of  Eng- 
land and  Wales,  hearing  such  scriptural, 
constructive  doctrine  of  the  Christian  church. 

I  have  been  at  many  meetings  to-day, 
and  at  one  of  them  two  speakers,  broad, 
catholic-minded,  cultured  men,  announced 
themselves  as  "Churchmen."  I  could  have 
understood  that  in  England,  where  we  have 
grown  into  a  loose  use  of  language;  but  in 
America,  where  you  are  always  precise  and 
accurate,   where  you  do  not    talk  *'  news- 


RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK.        24I 

paperese,"  I  was  amazed  to  hear  the  term 
used,  as  they  used  it,  to  characterize  a 
single  denomination. 

With  some  others,  I  have  set  myself  in 
England  to  recover  the  term  "Churchman" 
as  the  proper  title  of  every  man  who  has 
joined  his  individual  Christian  life  with  an 
organized  Christian  society.  We  are  known 
by  negative  terms  in  England.  You,  I 
believe,  have  only  one  of  those  negative 
terms  in  America.  We  are  known  as 
Protestants,  Nonconformists,  and  Dissen- 
ters. You,  together  with  other  great 
churches  in  this  country,  have  only  the  first 
of  those  negative  terms  as  descriptive  of 
you. 

I  am  not  ashamed  of  being  called  Prot- 
estant :  I  glory  in  it ;  and  I  glory  in  it  the 
more  because  there  is  a  large  school  of 
thought  growing  up  in  a  particular  church  in 
England  which  is  trying  to  banish  the  word 
and  to  banish  the  thing.  And  I  am  proud 
as  any  man  can  be  of  a  great  heritage  in  the 
name  of    Nonconformist  and   the   name  of 


242        RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK. 

Dissenter.  But  while  I  use  these  terms  for 
myself,  and  while  I  use  them  amongst  my 
friends,  I  rise  in  indignant  repudiation  when 
either  Catholic  or  Anglican  flings  those 
terms  at  me  as  descriptive  of  my  position, 
and  I  claim  to  be  as  against  them  not  only 
a  Churchman,  but  a  High  Churchman. 

The  Protestant  is  a  man  who  protests. 
What  does  he  protest  against?  He  protests 
against  the  claim  of  a  particular  ecclesiasti- 
cal dignitary  to  be  the  vicar  of  Christ  on 
earth;  that  is  what  he  protests  against 
ultimately,  and  his  protest  is  based  upon 
this,  that,  when  he  has  Christ  himself,  he 
stands  in  no  need  of  a  vicar  of  Christ. 
A  vicar,  as  you  know,  is,  etymologically 
and  actually,  one  present  who  represents 
another  who  is  absent.  Very  well.  If  a 
great  church  is  content  to  say  that  the 
Master  is  absent  and  must  have  a  vicar  to 
represent  him,  that  is  its  own  lookout. 
But  since  we  claim,  and  claim  with  good 
evidence  of  the  truth,  that  we  have  a 
Master  with  us,   then    we    protest    against 


RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK.        243 

any  man  setting  himself  up  to  be  Christ's 
vicar. 

I    have    been    at    a    good   many  jubilees 
lately;   in  fact,   I   feel  quite  at  home   at   a 
jubilee.      We  have  been  having  a  Diamond 
Jubilee  in  England.     You  have  not  reached 
that  yet:   I  hope  you  will,  and  I  hope  Dr. 
Abbott    will    be    pastor.      But   at  the    real 
jubilee  of  Her  Majesty's  reign  ten  years  ago, 
there  was  a  great  ceremony  of  thanksgiving 
at  Westminster  Abbey.      I  sat  with  others 
in  the  great  west  gallery  and  had  full  view 
of  the  whole  scene.      I   noticed  one    thing 
very   striking   and   very    suggestive.       You 
know,   in   England  we  do  nothing  without 
the  presence  of   royalty;   but,  as  the  Queen 
cannot   be   everywhere,   we  have    a    pretty 
little  device  in  the  shape  of  what  is  called  a 
mace,  and  this  mace  is  representative  of  the 
ofificial    presence    of    the    Sovereign.      The 
House  of  Lords  cannot  sit  in  session  unless 
the  mace  is  set  on  the  table,  in  suggestion 
of  the  fact  that  the  Queen  is  representatively 
present.     The  House  of  Commons  cannot 


244       RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK, 

sit  without  its  mace  on  the  table.  Nor 
can  the  High  Court  of  Justice.  At  this 
jubilee  service  every  one  of  these  great 
bodies  brought  into  Westminster  Abbey  its 
own  mace,  carried  by  its  mace-bearer.  But 
when,  from  the  magnificent  composition  on 
the  organ,  specially  written  for  that  occa- 
sion. Dr.  Bridge  swiftly  swept  the  chords 
around,  and  struck  the  first  notes  of  the 
National  Anthem,  the  crowd  got  up  and 
cried,  "The  Queen!  The  Queen!" — and 
servitors  hurried  with  cloths  and  covered 
up  these  maces.  The  living  Queen  was 
there;  and  the  metal  mace,  which  was  but 
symbolic,  had  become  an  offense  and  must 
be  covered  up.  So,  when  we  have  the  liv- 
ing Christ  with  us,  we  cover  up  the  mace- 
vicariate,  whether  it  be  Romish,  or  Angli- 
can, or  Nonconformist.  The  living  Christ 
is  what  integrates  our  church  life,  and  we 
are  happy  when  Ave  have  him. 

Well,  I  might  illustrate  our  English  Non- 
conformity and  Dissent  in  similar  terms,  but 
then  I  should  be  making  a  speech.     Yet, 


RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK.       245 

when  all  these  little  expositions  of  terms 
were  over,  I  should  come  to  this  point,  that 
these  negative  terms  are  but  clearances  to 
make  a  wide-open  space,  on  which  our  posi- 
tive, constructive  church  doctrine  rears  itself 
in  architectural  symmetry  and  beauty.  We 
are  Churchmen,  and  no  negative  term  de- 
scribes us ;  and  I  shall  regret  it  with  a  deep, 
unspeakable  regret  if  the  churches  outside 
two  particular  churches  in  this  country  ever 
consent  to  surrender  that  accurately  descrip- 
tive term  when  speaking  of  their  organized 
association  in  Christ  and  with  each  other. 

Much  has  been  said  to-night  about  the 
Church  of  the  Future.  I  was  glad  to  hear 
it  is  going  to  be  in  a  sense  the  Church  of 
the  Past  and  the  Church  of  the  Present  im- 
proved. I  cannot  join  in  any  wholesale 
criticism,  still  less  denunciation,  of  earlier 
forms  of  church  life,  whether  in  England  or 
America.  It  is  true  the  work  of  the  Church 
has  been  markedly  individualistic,  but  then 
the  whole  life  of  the  world  during  the  last 
fifty  years  has  been  markedly  individuahstic. 


246        RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK. 

and  the  church  has  entered  into  the  condi- 
tions of  life  around  it,  and  at  least  has  tried 
to  make  these  individual  men  as  good  as 
they  could   be   made.     We  have   come  to 
changed  conditions  to-day;  and  it  is  a  right 
instinct  that  is   aroused   in   the  Church   to 
make  it  alive  to  its  social  obligations  and 
duties.      But  it  seems  to  me  that  the  differ- 
ence between  the  work  that  lies  behind  us 
and   the  work  that   lies  before  us   may  be 
stated  as  the   difference  between  remedial 
Christianity    and    preventive     Christianity. 
That  is  to  say,  the  social  v/ork  of  the  Church 
in  the  past — for  the  Church  has  had  its  social 
work  in  the  past,  and  has  done  it  with  more 
or  less  efficiency — has  been  to  remedy  the 
effects  of  evils  which  have  been  left  to  work 
themselves  out  and  multiply  themselves  in 
fresh  evil   effects.      To-day  the   Church  has 
aroused  itself  to  this:  it  is  our  business  to 
strike  deeper,  to  get  at  the  roots  of  these 
evils  and  remove  them, — and  then  we  shall 
be    under    no    necessity    to    remedy    their 
effects. 


RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK.        247 

For   instance,    take    the    various   philan- 
thropic agencies  of  the  Church  in  the  past. 
They  have   been    the    kindliest    of  human 
movements,  and   the   total  of  their  effects 
constitutes  a  story  which  should  fill  us  with 
gratitude  to  God  to-night — the  philanthro- 
pies of  healing,  the  philanthropies  of  eman- 
cipating,   the    philanthropies    which    have 
raised    the   whole    tone    of    thought    about 
women  and  children,  about  workers  in  our 
factories  and  toilers  on  the  land  and  on  the 
sea.     But  among  all  these  philanthropies, 
the  Church  stopped  short  of  striking  down 
at  that  root  of  sclfisJmess^  which  is  the  life- 
origin  of  all  the  mischiefs  that  are  spread 
around   us  to-day.      We  have   now  opened 
our  eyes   to  that  fact;   and   under  the  gui- 
dance of  great  and  consecrated  thinkers  it 
is   becoming  generally   understood   by   our 
people   that   it   is  not   sufficient   to   give   a 
basin  of  soup  and  a  blanket  to  some  poor 
man,  but  the  duty  is  to  work  for  laws  that 
shall  prevent  men  from  ever  coming  to  such 
poverty. 


.248        RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK. 

Of  course,  among  all  this  work  we  have 
to  remember — and  at  times  I  think  some 
of  our  social  enthusiasts  forget  it  or  do  not 
sufficiently  rate  it  at  its  significant  value — 
that  much  of  the  poverty,  much  of  the  sin, 
much  of  the  suffering  in  the  world  are  due, 
not  to  economic  but  to  moral  causes;  and 
the  Church  must  never  forget  that,  in  striv- 
ing to  get  at  a  new  economy,  she  must, 
alongside  that  effort,  continue  her  old  work 
of  trying  to  get  at  the  lapsed  and  the  fallen, 
who,  it  may  be,  have  lapsed  and  fallen 
through  evil  conditions  in  the  past,  but  who 
are  with  us  to-day  and  whose  ills  are  turned 
in  sin  and  shame  upon  us.  She  must  strive 
at  a  gospel  which  aims  at  individual  conver- 
sion, and  must  do  this  as  essential  and 
preparatory  to  that  other  and  larger  social 
enterprise  upon  which  we  are  graciously 
entering  to-day. 

If  I  may  be  permitted  to  say  so,  without 
even  the  distant  suggestion  of  mere  compli- 
ment, nothing  in  President  Tucker's  speech 
struck  so  deep  a  chord   in   me  as  that  in 


RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK.        249 

which  he  reiterated  his  beHef  that  the 
Church  of  Christ  must  lose  itself  in  humanity. 
Yes,  it  must;  but  it  must  lose  itself  as  a 
separate  entity  all  the  same.  You  plunge 
leaven  into  the  meal;  it  is  lost  in  the  meal; 
it  does  its  work  in  the  meal:  but  it  is  able 
to  do  its  leavening  work  because  it  is  sepa- 
rate in  nature  from  the  meal  which  it  is 
there  to  leaven. 

And  that  is  what  we  mean  in   England 
when  we  call  ourselves  ''Separatists."     It 
does  not  mean  that  we  are  gardens  walled 
around.      It  does  not  mean  that  we  are  to 
live  our  own  little  life  in  our  own  little  way, 
and  get  safely  up  to  glory  sooner  or  later. 
It  means  that  we  come  away  from  the  world 
in  order  to   go   into    the  world ;    we  come 
away  from  the  world  to  Christ  in  order  that 
we   may   carry  Christ    back    to    the  world. 
We    build    up    our    churches    of    men    and 
women  who  have  been  alone  with  Christ; 
and    then,    when    they    have   so    separated 
themselves    into    communion    with    Christ, 
**  Nov/,"  we  say,  '*  plunge  right  into  the 


250        RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK, 

world  and  lose  yourselves  in  the  work  of 
leavening  the  whole  of  humanity  up  to  your 
own  faith,  your  own  love,  your  own  joy  and 
hope."  Has  it  ever  been  your  tragic  lot  to 
watch  the  rescue  of  a  drowning  man — how 
he  tries  to  clasp  his  rescuer  and  so  doom 
both  to  destruction  ?  But  the  wise  rescuer 
knows  he  must  not  let  the  poor,  drowning 
creature  touch  him.  He  must  get  at  him 
and  grasp  him,  and  not  be  grasped  by  him. 
It  is  so  with  the  world  and  the  Church. 
The  Church  must  grasp  the  world,  must 
grasp  it  by  the  firm  grip  of  the  strength  it 
has  discovered  in  Christ,  must  be  separate 
from,  in  order  that  it  may  be  one  with,  the 
world  it  means  to  save.  Who  would  say 
that  Christ,  who  identified  himself  with  the 
race,  had  not  to  be  separate  from  it  ? 
Separateness  ran  right  through  from  the 
first  day  to  the  last  of  that  unique  life;  but 
it  was  the  separateness  which  I  am  trying,  I 
fear  vainly,  to  describe, — the  separateness 
of  one  who  finds  the  spring  of  his  life  else- 
ivhere,    and   is    consecrated   to    ideals   far 


RETROSPECT  AND    OUTLOOK,        2$! 

above  the  rush  and  movement  of  the  life 
around  him,  but  who  out  of  that  separate- 
ness  gave  himself  to  the  race,  and,  as  he  was 
lost  in  it,  lifted  it  to  new  vision  and  hope. 

And  so  the  Church  of  the  Future,  striking 
its  roots  deep  into  the  past,  above  all  strik- 
ing its  roots  deep  into  the  soil  prepared  by 
Him  who  promised  to  come  and  be  in  the 
midst  of  his  people,  must  out  of  such  root- 
age bear  fruit  more  abundant,  more  beauti- 
ful, more  fragrant,  more  satisfying  than  it 
has  done  in  the  past. 

Dr.  Abbott  and  Friends,  it  has  been  a 
sacrament  to  me  to  be  at  Plymouth  at  this 
jubilee.  Two  things  have  struck  me.  They 
are  quite  in  the  line  of  what  I  have  been 
saying.  The  first  is,  that  amid  all  the  extra- 
ordinary services  of  this  occasion  you  have 
steadily  maintained  your  regular  work, — 
not  allowed  it  to  flag.  To  me,  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  things  was  that,  though  you 
were  here  for  a  special  memorial  service 
last  Sunday  morning,  you  admitted  mem- 
bers to  this  church  ia  the  ordinary  way  at 


252        RETROSFECT  AND    OUTLOOK. 

communion.  It  was  typical  of  the  whole 
attitude  of  this  church  to  this  jubilee: 
"'  We  will  rejoice,  and  we  will  sing  special 
songs;  but  we  will  go  on  with  our  work." 
There  seems  to  me  great  hope  in  that. 

And  a  second  point  which  has  struck  me 
is  that,  while  you  have  been  commemorat- 
ing a  great  personality,  a  personality  so  con- 
tagious, so  great,  as  to  be  felt  beyond  the 
sea  hot  less  than  here,  you  have  remem- 
bered your  present  duty  and  consecrated 
yourselves  afresh  to  the  work  which  lies 
before  you.  In  that  spirit,  my  dear  friends, 
I  pray  you  may  continue.  Continuing  so, 
living  the  life  of  to-day,  among  the  men  of 
to-day,  preaching  the  truth  of  to-day,  there 
can  but  come  upon  you  that  blessing  of 
God  which  maketh  rich,  that  grace  of  Christ 
which,  in  proportion  as  it  enables  you  to 
work  for  others,  fills  you  with  joy  and  satis- 
faction. 


Zbc  descent  trom  tbe  /iDount 

LYMAN   ABBOTT. 


VIII. 

Uhc  Descent  from  tbe  /iDount.' 

By  the  Rev.  LYMAN  ABBOTT.  D.D. 

"  And  look  that  thou  make  them  after  their 
pattern,  which  was  shewed  thee  in  the  mount." — 
Exodus^  XXV.  40. 

Moses  was  accustomed  from  time  to 
time  to  go  away  from  Israel,  into  mountain 
solitudes,  and  there  receive  the  inspiration 
which  was  to  impel  and  the  vision  which 
was  to  instruct.  Inspired  and  instructed, 
he  came  down  from  these  mountain  solitudes 
to  tell  the  people  how  they  were  to  live. 
Thus  inspired  and  instructed,  he  laid  the 
foundations  of  the  Hebrew  commonwealth; 

»  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  New  York,  Sunday 
morning,  November  14,  1897. 

255 


256   THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT, 

revealed  to  them  the  great  political  princi- 
ples which  have  underlaid  free  governments 
ever  since,  the  fundamental  principles  of 
social  moral  order,  and  the  essential  ele- 
ments of  vital  spiritual  experience.  To-day 
it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  better  and 
simpler  statement  of  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples of  the  social  order  than  that  afforded 
by  the  Ten  Commandments.  The  Levitical 
code  has  long  since  passed  away  into 
oblivion,  but  the  four  elements  of  religious 
experience  to  which  it  gave  expression  still 
abide  as  the  four  fundamental  elements  of 
spiritual  life — penitence,  thanksgiving,  con- 
secration, and  communion. 

From  time  to  time  prophets  and  poets 
arise  who  bring  to  the  world  similar  inspi- 
ration and  similar  vision:  men  with  clear 
sight,  who  have  perceived  more  clearly  than 
most  men  what  are  the  eternal  verities;  men 
of  quickened  hearts,  who  have  more  courage 
than  most  men  to  proclaim  what  they  have 
seen;  men  of  the  larger  hope,  more  auda- 
cious to  believe   that  the  ideals  which  they 


THE   DESCENT  FROM   TttE  MOUNT.    257 

have  seen  in  the  mountain-top  can  be  real- 
ized in  common  life.  Poets,  we  call  these 
men.  The  word  poet  means  '*  maker." 
The  poet  is  the  real  maker  of  life,  the  real 
creator,  for  he  is  the  one  who  etches  for  us 
what  we  are  to  make.  Prophets,  we  call 
them,  because  they  speak  for  another,  and 
through  them  Another  speaks  forth  the 
truth — the  truth  of  life  coming  from  God. 
These  vision  -  experiences  come  to  us  in 
our  households,  interpreted  to  us  by  the 
prophets  of  our  homes.  Women,  God  makes 
to  be  idealists.  They  see  with  clearer  vision 
than  men,  whose  eyes  are  filled  with  dust, 
and  feel  with  more  blessed  assurances  than 
men,  whose  hearts  are  perturbed  with  the 
perpetual  conflicts  of  life.  Blessed  is  the 
man  who  can  look  back  to  the  visions  he 
has  received  from  his  mother!  Blessed  the 
man  who  walks  with  a  guardian  angel  by 
his  side,  who  from  time  to  time  clears 
away  the  dust  that  fills  his  eyes  as  well  as 
the  perturbations  that  disturb  his  heart, 
and  helps  him  to  see  the  true  life  and  the 


258    THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE   MOUNT. 

true   God,    through   eyes  he   trusts   in   the 
woman  he  loves! 

But  not  only  through  others  —  poets, 
prophets,  wives,  mothers  —  come  these 
visions  to  us:  they  come  to  us  directly  and 
immediately.  All  healthful  young  men  and 
young  women  have  these  vision-hours. 
They  all  love  poetry ;  they  all  love  novels, 
— not  always  the  modern  novel,  which  is 
very  far  from  a  portraiture  of  ideals,  but 
novels  and  poetry  which  transcend  all  visi- 
ble realities.  All  healthful  young  people 
love  poetry  and  love  good  novels,  because 
these  appeal  to  their  sense  of  vision.  They 
see  a  better  life  than  that  by  which  they  are 
surrounded;  a  better  love  than  that  which 
blooms  by  their  side;  a  larger  hope  than 
that  which  animates  the  public  men,  the 
business  men,  the  social  life  in  which  they 
walk.  When  the  cynic  tells  them  that  they 
are  young,  and  laughs  at  the  hopes  and 
visions  of  their  youth,  he  is  a  liar:  they  are 
truth-seers.  There  is  not  a  boy  here  to-day 
who  does  not  sometimes  see  a  vision  of  a 


THE  DESCENT  FROM    THE   MOUNT.    259 

better  life,  nor  a  girl  who  does  not  some- 
times feel  herself  drawn  to  something  more 
splendid  than  she  has  ever  witnessed.    These 
are  beckonings  of  God.     This  is  the  touch 
of  God   upon  the  eyes  that  are  blind,  say- 
ing, Open  your  eyes  and  see,  you  that  saw 
not.     Welcome    these    visions    and  truths. 
In  them  God  calls  you  unto  the  mountain- 
top,  that  he  may  reveal  to  you  the  pattern 
according  to  which  life  should  be  shaped. 
And  even  in  later  life,  from  time  to  time, 
we    get    these    visions.       Sometimes    they 
come     through     poet,     through     prophet, 
through    wife,    through    mother,    through 
memory    of    past    experience;     sometimes 
they  come  we  know  not  how.     Tennyson 
says— I  quote  his  sentiment,  not  his  words, 
—"We  walk  in  the  valley,  and  the  eternal 
mountains  are   hid  by  the  hills  of  time." 
Sometimes  we  climb  these  hills  of  time  and 
see  the  eternal  mountains,— and  then,  when 
we  come  back  again,  are  almost  inclined  to 
discount  our  vision  and  put  it  from  us  as  an 
idle  and   fugacious   thing.      No,    God    has 


26o    THE  DESCENT  FROM    THE   MOUNT. 

called  us  to  the  mountain-top  to  show  us  a 
pattern. 

Now  there  are  two  things  that  I  want  to 
say  about  these  patterns,  these  visions. 
The  first  is,  that  we  are  not  to  stay  in  the 
mountain-top  looking  at  them.  We  are  not 
to  think  that  because  we  have  enjoyed  a 
vision,  we  are  religious.  It  is  no  more 
religious  to  enjoy  a  splendid  vision  of  the 
truth  than  it  is  brave  to  enjoy  reading 
Tennyson's  ''Charge  of  the  Six  Hundred." 
We  can  no  more  dwell  in  these  than  we  can 
live  in  an  architect's  plans.  When  the  plan 
is  drawn,  the  house  is  to  be  built  according 
to  the  plan.  But  the  plan  is  not  the  house. 
When  the  inspiration  of  courage  has  been 
stirred  in  our  heart  by  the  charge  of  the  Six 
Hundred,  we  are  to  do  and  dare  and  die,  if 
need  be;  but  the  courage  is  in  doing  and 
daring  and  dying,  not  in  reading  the  poem 
about  doing  and  daring  and  dying.  You 
cannot  divide  life  into  two  sections,  one 
secular  and  the  other  religious,  and  think 
you  are  religious  because  when  the  curtain 


THE  DESCENT  FROM    THE  MOUNT,    26 1 

is  raised  and  the  drama  is  played  before  your 
eyes  you  wipe  the  tears  away  from  your 
eyes  under  the  pathos  of  it,  or  feel  your 
heart  stirred  with  the  splendid  utterances  of 
the  elocutionist.  To  be  religious  is  to  live 
the  drama  of  life,  not  to  look  at  it;  to  act 
the  true  life,  not  to  hear  it. 

We  are  to  build  according  to  the  pattern 
in  the  mount;  not  merely  stay  and  feast 
our  eyes  upon  it.  Our  noblest  moments  are 
to  be  those  that  indicate  to  us  what  our  life 
should  be.  We  are  not  to  take  counsel  of 
our  more  prosaic  hours;  we  are  not  to  be 
guided  by  our  more  doubtful  experiences; 
we  are  not  to  sail  by  our  guesses  in  the 
hours  when  the  fog  environs ;  we  are  not  to 
walk  by  short-sighted  expediencies  in  the 
masmatic  mists  of  the  valley.  Having 
climbed  the  hills  and  seen  the  path,  in  that 
very  path  which  has  been  so  witnessed  to  us 
from  the  hilltop  we  are  to  walk.  When 
we  have  ascended  our  mount  and  the  vision 
has  been  given  us  and  the  pattern  displayed, 
we  are  to  build  according  to  that  pattern. 


262    THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT. 

and  not  according  to  some  poorer  and  lower 
one. 

Men  say  that  these  visions  are  imprac- 
ticable. The  only  thing  that  is  practicable 
is  the  highest.  It  is  not  true,  ''Whatever 
is,  is  right;"  but  it  is  true,  ** Whatever  is 
right,  can  be."  And  it  is  for  us,  when  we 
have  gotten  the  vision  of  purity  and  truth 
and  courage  and  righteousness,  then  to  act  it 
out  in  the  real  drama  of  our  daily  life.  It 
is  not  the  practical  politician  who  can  tell  us 
what  will  make  a  prosperous  nation:  it  is 
the  poet.  It  is  not  the  man  who  measures 
life  by  expediency  who  can  tell  us  what  will 
make  prosperity  either  to  the  individual, 
the  home,  the  nation,  or  the  church:  It  is 
the  prophet.  It  is  not  Aaron  Burr:  it  is 
Charles  Sumner.  When  we  have  been  on 
the  mountain-top,  and  have  seen  the  vision, 
and  our  hearts  have  burned  within  us  with 
a  larger  hope,  and  we  have  come  down  out 
of  the  mountain-top  to  engage  in  the  ordi- 
nary vocations  of  our  life,  in  the  shop,  the 
office,    the    home,    we    are    to    carry    the 


THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT,    263 

memory  of  that  vision  with  us  and  square 
our  life  to  that.  Never  anything  less. 
**Be  ye  perfect  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is 
perfect."  We  are  not  to  say,  ''Ah,  that  is 
too  much.  I  cannot  be  perfect."  What  if 
a  mason  should  say,  ''You  cannot  have  a 
perfectly  perpendicular  wall.  I  will  let  the 
house  be  crooked!"  What  if  a  plumber 
should  say,  "You  cannot  prevent  a  pipe 
from  leaking,  I  will  let  the  pipe  leak!" 
That  is  not  the  kind  of  plumber  or  mason 
we  want.  We  are  to  build  to  the  plumb- 
line  ;  and  the  ideal  life  is  that  by  which  we 
are  always  to  test  our  conduct,  measure  our 
character,  and  guide  and  determine  our 
living. 

For  the  last  week  this  church  has  been 
upon  the  mountain-top.  I  wonder  how 
many  have  said  to  me,  "What  an  uplifting 
time  we  have  had!"  My  task  this  morn- 
ing is  no  simple  or  easy  one;  it  is  so  to 
bring  you  down  from  the  mountain-top  that 
your  vision  will  do  you  good,  not  harm. 
If  for  this  week  you  and  I  in  our  individual 


264    THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT, 

lives,  and  this  church  in  its  church-Hfe,  are 
to  go  on  living  the  same  life  we  lived 
before,  with  no  deeper  faith  in  God,  no 
larger  sympathy  for  our  fellow  men,  no 
more  vital  spirit  of  self-sacrifice,  no  more 
living  consciousness  of  a  living  Christ  than 
we  had  before,  it  were  far  better  for  us  if  we 
had  never  gone  up  to  the  mountain-top. 

It  seems  to  me,  as  I  look  back  upon  these 
meetings,  as  though  some  divine  mind  had 
wrought  on  the  mind  of  each  speaker  who 
has  addressed  us,  and  worked  them  all  to  a 
common  end  and  fashioned  them  all  to  a 
common  message:  Dr.  Gordon  declaring  to 
us  that  there  is  but  one  Sovereignty  in  the 
world ;  Dr.  Gladden  telling  us  that  we  only 
conform  to  our  Father  which  is  in  heaven 
when  we  are  inspired  by  his  love  and  count 
all  men  our  brethren ;  Dr.  Tucker  saying  to 
us  that  we  cannot  live  this  life  of  service 
and  of  love  without  sacrifice,  and  that  we 
shall  accomplish  God's  work  in  the  world 
only  as  we  lose  our  life  that  we  may  find 
life  for  others ;  and  Dr.  Berry  encircling  this 


THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT.    265 

message  by  his  addresses  on  Sunday  morn- 
ing and  on  Thursday  evening,  phrased  in 
the  enunciation  of  the  truth  that  the  living 
Christ  in  the  heart  of  a  Hving  church  is  the 
secret  of  its  power — to  know  the  living 
God,  to  carry  out  the  spirit  of  brotherhood, 
to  bear  the  cross. 

This  is  the  vision  we  have  had.  What 
shall  we  do  because  of  it  ?  How  are  we  to 
build  our  church-life  and  our  individual 
lives  ? 

There  is  but  one  Sovereignty  in  the  world, 
— Love.  Not  merely  there  is  love  in  the 
world ;  not  merely  there  is  sovereignty  in 
the  world;  but  there  is  only  one  Sover- 
eignty, and  that  Sovereignty  is  Love,  only 
one  supreme  Power,  and  that  Power  is 
Love.  How  many  men  are  there  who 
really  think  righteousness  and  purity  and 
truth  are  in  the  world  conquering  and  to 
conquer?  But  we  shall  have  listened  to  the 
services  of  the  last  week  in  vain  if  we  do  not 
go  back  to  take  hold  of  life  with  a  larger 
hope,  because  of  a  profounder  faith  in  love's 


266    THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT, 

sovereignty.  The  iceberg  breaks  off  from 
the  glaciers  in  the  North  and  floats  down- 
ward to  freeze  the  tropics.  No  flowers 
bloom  upon  it;  no  birds  sing  about  it;  no 
trees  grow  upon  it ;  no  life  is  nurtured  on  its 
bosom.  But  the  great  Gulf  Stream  em- 
braces it,  and  little  by  little  it  dissolves,  and 
takes  on  the  heat  of  the  stream,  and  is  trans- 
formed into  it  and  swept  by  it  to  Europe's 
shore,  to  baptize  and  to  give  it  life.  God 
is  the  Gulf  Stream  of  history ;  and  all  cold- 
ness and  selfishness,  apostasy  and  falsehood 
and  unrighteousness  are  yet  to  be  dissolved 
in  him.  Iceberg  after  iceberg,  ice-flow  after 
ice-flow,  floats  down,  but  it  floats  on  the 
bosom  of  God.  God's  breath  is  in  the 
world,  and  it  is  a  breath  of  spring.  If  when 
spring  comes  you  find  one  corner  of  your 
garden  still  hard  with  frost,  or  still  covered 
with  snow,  do  you  despair  ?  You  wait  a 
little.  Perhaps  the  time  for  planting  has 
not  yet  come,  nor  of  digging,  but  you  know 
it  will  come,  and  you  do  not  question  that 
the  breath  of  God  is  the  breath  of  spring. 


THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE   MOUNT.    26/ 

We  shall  have  heard  this  message  in  vain  if 
we  do  not  take  up  our  life  with  a  larger 
hope. 

And  because  God's  heart  is  love  and 
God's  will  is  love,  our  work  in  it,  God's 
work  in  the  world,  is  a  work  of  love.  Last 
night  if  you  had  gone  up  Broadway  at  ten 
o'clock  you  would  have  seen  a  line  of  men 
at  the  corner  of  Tenth  Street.  You 
may  see  it  any  night.  All  night  long  that 
line  is  forming,  men  sitting  on  the  curb- 
stone, standing  in  procession,  waiting  until 
half-past  four  or  five  o'clock  comes,  that 
they  may  get  a  loaf  of  bread  from  the 
Vienna  Bakery.  So  I  am  told,  and  I  have 
seen  the  procession  once.  In  the  iron 
country  of  Pennsylvania  are  men  —  your 
brothers,  my  brothers — who  have  to  work 
in  the  iron-mills  twelve  hours  a  day  every 
day  in  the  year.  What  time  does  that 
leave  for  home,  for  wife,  for  children,  even 
for  worship?  In  the  city  of  New  York  and 
Brooklyn  are  women  —  your  sisters,  no 
stronger,  no  better  able  to  bear  the  stress 


268    THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT. 

of  life  than  your  daughters  and  mine — who 
work  in  stores,  the  proprietors  of  which  will 
not  allow  them  to  take  a  seat  even  when 
they  are  doing  no  work.  In  some  of  the 
States  of  this  Union  are  children,  six, 
seven,  eight,  nine  years  of  age,  dwarfing 
their  minds  and  their  bodies  by  toil  and 
labor,  when  they  should  be  at  play  or  at 
school.  These  are  some  of  the  facts'  of  our 
industrial  life.  They  are  not  so  bad  as  the 
facts  of  slavery.  But  they  are  not  human 
brotherhood.  It  is  not  for  this  that  Christ 
came  into  the  world  and  lived  and  suffered 
and  died.  There  is  something  more  yet  for 
us  to  do.  Do  you  ask  me  how  shall  we  cor- 
rect these  foul  abuses  ?  It  is  not  mine  to 
tell  you  how;  not  mine,  at  all  events, 
to-day;  enough  for  me  to  say  this:  There 
is  a  vision  of  human  brotherhood  that  is  far 
above  this;  a  vision  of  human  brotherhood 
which  will  give  to  all  men  enough ;  which 
will  give  to  every  man  opportunity  for  self- 
development  and  self-culture;  which  v/ill 
give  to  every  husband  time  for  his  Avife,  and 


THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT.    269 

to  every  father  time  for  his  children,  and  to 
every  man  time  for  himself  and  for  his  God. 
That  is  the  vision;  and  you  and  I  are  not 
to  be  content  until  that  vision  is  realized. 
If  we  heard  Dr.  Washington  Gladden' s 
address  here  last  Thursday  night,  in  which, 
wisely  refusing  to  discuss  methods  and 
plans,  he  simply  held  up  the  ideal  of  human 
brotherhood  before  us, — if  we  heard  that, 
and  then  do  not  do  something  this  very 
week  to  realize  it,  we  had  better  not  have 
heard.  It  is  my  duty  to  make  human 
brotherhood  a  little  more  real  in  the  6^?^/- 
look  office,  and  yours  to  make  it  a  little 
more  real  in  the  relations  with  your  domes- 
tic servants,  and  in  your  office  and  shop  and 
store  and  factory,  or  your  vision  of  human 
brotherhood  has  been  worse  than  in  vain. 
You  are  to  come  down  from  the  mountain- 
top  and  build  according  to  the  pattern. 
Will  you  ? 

We  cannot  do  this  without  sacrifice.  It 
costs  something.  It  may  cost  a  great  deal. 
To  some  men,  much;  to  some  men,  little. 


2/0    THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT, 

But,  at  all  events,  if  the  law  of  human 
society  is  brotherhood,  the  law  of  church  is 
more  than  brotherhood;  it  is  this:  **As  I 
have  loved  you,  that  ye  also  love  one 
another."  It  is  service  carried  on  to  self- 
sacrifice. 

What  is  a  church  of  God  ?  It  is  not  a 
body  of  men  who  come  together  for  esthetic 
enjoyment,  to  listen  to  fine  music  and  re- 
joice in  a  beautiful  house,  or  to  be  pleased 
by  oratorical  display  and  splendid  eloquence, 
or  to  be  instructed  and  uplifted  through  the 
intellect  and  by  discussion.  It  is  not  a 
body  of  men  and  women  who  come  together, 
as  on  a  mountain-top,  to  see  divine  and 
spiritual  visions,  and  feel  their  hearts  played 
upon  as  by  the  very  fingers  of  God  himself, 
and  listen  to  the  very  music  of  the  Celestial 
City.  None  of  these  things.  Do  you 
remember  how  John  the  Baptist  sent  to 
Jesus,  and  said,  **Art  thou  the  Messiah,  or 
shall  we  look  for  another?"  and  do  you 
remember  what  he  answered  to  the  delega- 
tion?   ''Wait."    And  then  he  went  on  with 


THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT.    2J\ 

his  work.     And  the  bhnd  came  to  him,  and 
he  touched  their  eyes,  and  they  went  away 
to  see ;  the  lame  came,  and  they  threw  away 
their  crutches;  the  lepers  came,  and  he  put 
his  hand  upon  their  brow,  and  the  scales 
fell  off  from  their  skin,  and  the  fresh  blood 
began  to  pulsate  again  in  their  veins.     And 
then,  when  the  work  of  healing  was  over, 
the  people  sat  upon   the  ground,   and  he, 
standing    on    a    little    eminence,    preached 
to  them.    And  as  he  preached  women  wiped 
away  the  tears  from  their  eyes;  and  men, 
despairing,  looking  upon  the  ground,  lifted 
up  their  eyes  and  took  the  sunshine  from 
Christ  s    face;  and    men    and    women   who 
had   sinned   away   their    lives,    and    lost    it 
all,  took  back  new  life  from  him  and  went 
forth   with    joy    and    hope    in    their  faces. 
Then,  when  the  sermon  was  over,  he  said 
to  John's  delegation,  "Go,  and  show  John 
again  what  things  ye  do  see  and  hear;   the 
blind    receive     their    sight,   and     the    lame 
walk,  the  lepers  are  cleansed,  and  the  deaf 
hear,    the    dead    are    raised,    and    the   poor 


2/2    THE  DESCENT  FROM    THE  MOUNT, 

have  the  glad  tidings  preached  to  them." 
What  is  a  church  of  Christ  ?  Do  you  want 
to  know  ?  Do  not  go  back  to  past  history 
to  find  out  what  apostolic  successions  have 
come  down  through  the  centuries.  Do  not 
go  to  the  record  to  find  out  what  creed  is 
written  in  the  church-book.  Do  not  go  to 
the  baptismal  font  to  see,  as  Professor  Swing 
has  said,  "whether  water  is  applied  to  the 
candidate  or  the  candidate  is  applied  to  the 
water."  These  are  not  the  questions  that 
determine  what  is  a  church  of  Christ.  Go 
into  the  homes  and  lives  of  the  church- 
members,  into  the  mission  work  of  the 
church,  into  the  heart  of  the  men  of  the 
church,  into  the  congregations  of  that 
church,  and  see  whether  those  that  have 
been  lame  and  footsore  and  weary  are 
beginning  to  throw  away  their  crutches  and 
march  toward  the  kingdom  of  God ;  whether 
those  who  have  walked  as  they  that  are 
blind,  or  as  seeing  men  as  trees  walking,  are 
beginning  to  get  their  eyes  open  and  to  see 
the   truth  of   God  with  celestial  clearness; 


THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT.    273 

whether  those  who  have  never  heard  any- 
thing but  the  beat  of  the  hammer  on  the 
anvil  are  beginning  to  hear  the  celestial 
choirs;  whether  those  who  were  sick  and 
struck  through  with  leprosy  are  beginning 
to  be  cleansed;  whether  those  that  were  in 
despair  because  of  their  sins  are  beginning 
to  look  up  and  say,  There  is  hope  for  me 
within  the  kingdom.  If  so,  that  is  a  church 
of  Christ,  whether  it  is  Quaker  or  Catholic, 
whether  Episcopal  or  Presbyterian.  What 
is  the  church  of  Christ?  The  church  that  is 
giving  its  service  to  men  in  the  highest  of 
their  being.  Are  you  going  to  give  your- 
self more  to  that  service?  Is  your  life  going 
to  be  a  higher  life  ?  Will  our  mission 
chapels  do  better  service  ?  Will  our  Sunday- 
school  be  richer  in  its  equipment  ?  Will 
our  individual  lives  be  nobler  ?  Can  you 
throw  away  one  crutch  and  walk  with  a 
crutch  and  a  cane  ?     This  is  the  question. 

You  heard,  and  you  applauded  with  a 
silent  appreciation,  which  is  better  than 
hand-clapping,  Dr.  Berry's  declaration  that 


274    THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE  MOUNT. 

the  faith  of  this  church  is  faith  in  a  Hving 
Christ.  I  was  very  glad — and  I  think  I 
speak  for  you  as  well — we  were  very  glad 
he  did  not  come  here  to  give  us  a  message 
about  Mr.  Beecher,  but  to  interpret  the  mes- 
sage that  he  and  we  had  received  in  past 
times  from  Mr.  Beecher.  The  living  Christ 
is  the  secret  of  the  power  of  the  church. 
Moses  came  down  from  Mount  Sinai,  and 
left  the  vision  of  Jehovah  there,  and  com- 
ing dov/n  wore  a  veil  upon  his  face,  as  Paul 
tells  us,  that  the  people  might  not  see  the 
reflected  glory  fade  away.  The  centuries 
passed  by,  and  Jehovah  came  again,  to  live 
in  visible  form,  to  walk  a  man  among  men; 
and  he  took  the  disciples  up  with  him  into 
the  Mount  of  Transfiguration,  and  they 
beheld  him  there  in  glory,  as  Moses  had 
beheld  him  in  glory  in  Mount  Sinai;  but 
when  the  cloud  received  those  that  talked 
with  Jesus,  the  revelation  of  Jehovah  was 
left,  and  the  visible  God  descended  out  of 
the  mountain-top  with  the  disciples.  That 
is    the    difference    between    Judaism    and 


THE  DESCENT  FROM   THE   MOUNT,    2^5 

Christianity.      One  Is  a  memory;   the  other 

is  a  living  experience. 

We    have    been    on    the    mountain-top; 
memories    have    been  about    us;    we  have 
seen,  as  it  were,  our  own  sainted  dead  ;  they 
have  been  with   Christ  and  we  with  Christ, 
together.     And  now  the  cloud  has  received 
the  sainted  dead  out  of  our  sight,  and  we 
are   coming   down   the   hill  into  the  valley 
where  need  and  poverty  and  suffering  and 
sin  all  are.      Let  us  bring  the  living  Christ 
with  us,  to  inspire  us,  to  bear  the  cross  of 
Christ,  not  in  gold  upon  our  bosoms,  nor  in 
steeple  on  our  church,  but  in  our  hearts  and 
in  our  lives,    that  by  our  service  we   may 
gather  all  men  to  ourselves  as  brothers  and 
to    God    as    the    All-Father  through  Jesus 
Christ  his  Son,  never  failing  in  our  hope  of 
the   final    result,    because   we    believe    that 
Love  is  the  only  Sovereignty. 


